Baby Girl Quilt with Fandango Fabric

My girlfriend Courtney is expecting her first baby any day now. She embroidered the whole front of this quilt (she's the same gal who made this embroidery piece) and asked me to add sashing, a back, and some binding. She lurved Fandango by Kate Spain, so we went with that.

And really, what's not to love about this line? It's such lovely fabric with wonderful feminine colors, but it isn't overwhelmed with cotton candy pink. Too bad it's old or else you could find it everywhere. I'm totally new to the whole "designer quilting fabric" thing, and wouldn't even have known about this line if not for my friend Yolanda, a fellow member of the Orange County Modern Quilting Guild. She gave me a charm pack because she's a doll.

For those of you new to quilting too, a charm pack is a bundle of about 40 pre-cut 5"x5" fabric squares. It usually has all the colorways from a fabric line, and you can use the pack in a plethora of ways.

(Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has *no idea* what it means to have a plethora. -- Name that movie!!)

Courtney and I both love Sunbonnet Sue!

Anyway, there are tons of tutorials out there on things to do with charm packs, my favorite site being Moda Bake Shop. I didn't use them for this project because I wanted to keep the design really simple. In part it's because I'm still intimidated by quilts and the need for accuracy in cutting, but also because I wanted to showcase the fabric as much as possible. Simplicity always feels like the best way to do that, you know?

This kind of reminds me of a brick path pattern, only it's not offset and it also has sashing in between the rows of "bricks". So maybe it's nothing like a brick path pattern. I'm calling it the pattern Running Brick though, because I'm a rebel and don't hold myself down by rules like that. I also brush my teeth before eating breakfast even though my daughter says I'm wrong to do it that way. Yeah, suck it Crest!

I cut each square in half, then sewed them end to end. I had seven strips of 12 bricks. I don't remember how wide I cut the sashing or how big the quilt ended up being, but it wasn't too big. Maybe a touch larger than a normal crib size. The sashing is a Kona Natural.


Click here for my flickr photostream to see these up close.


I got all of my free motion quilting ideas from Leah Day. I used Curvy Key, River Path, Sixes Swirl (kind of), and Mesh Curtain (again, kind of - it's more like I used it for inspiration, but ended up doing it completely differently). Mesh Curtain gives such a lovely texture, almost like a tree bark. I see myself using that as my go-to quilting design. It reminds me of this, one of my favorite BH&G covers in a while (February 2011):

I also added piping to the binding. It's made from the shirt Courtney's husband was wearing when they met. Isn't that super romantic??????? I'll be showing you how I did that in a very high-level tutorial probably tomorrow. I won't be going as in depth as I like to, but hopefully you'll get the idea.

Oh, and I've quit smoking.

xoxo,