Finally Finished -- another baby quilt!

...and the babies just keep coming (thank goodness).

I added this photo because it's amazing how it looks inside my studio vs outside.

My friend Vicki and I met over 30 years ago when our boys were in Scouting. Our oldest son, Jack, and her oldest son, Wesley, spent a lot of time at campouts, meetings and other scouting activities as buddies, and Vicki and I bonded over the fact that our boys were hopefully going in the right direction because they were scouts. Jack made it to Life rank, but he turned 16 shortly thereafter and the lure of girls, guitars and gas fumes was too much to overcome to make it to the Eagle rank. It's ok--he learned a lot of good things from scouting that have served him well in life, and I gained a wonderful friend from it.

Vicki and Jim married about four months after the Hubs and I remarried. We saw each other off and on and basically lost touch before the pandemic began. We both know life happens and we would eventually catch each other on the phone and get brought up to speed with happenings in our respective worlds. 

Earlier this year and after several health issues, Vicki's husband received the news that continued treatments for his cancer were not going to be effective, and it was time to put affairs in order. I told Vicki, "Let me help." While I did a lot of caregiving for my mother through her cancer and subsequent heart diseases, I can't imagine going through it with a spouse. While the Hubs and I are on solid ground about what to do in case of losing the other, I will admit that I question whether my patience level could sustain a prolonged illness (mine or his). But in Vicki's case, I saw that my mission was to help save her sanity by taking her mind off of what she was facing in her daily life. I didn't do anything special; the thing I did the most was come over so she could talk and get a bit of a break. 

On one of those afternoons, she told me about the new great-grandson that was coming. She told me she wanted a quilt for him but she's not a quilter and the timing with Jim's illness told her she may need some help. We reviewed some patterns; she liked the Farm Friends quilt I've been showing you the last couple of months. The only issue we had with it was its original size; 21" x 29". That's not even a baby quilt for a preemie in my book. We agreed that enlarging the pattern by approximately 150% would be ideal.

I've shown you the progress, and now we have the quilt. 

There is always a breeze blowing up here that keeps the quilts from hanging
like they should for their glamour shots.

The little man is due next month. Vicki's stepdaughter will deliver the quilt to South Carolina when he arrives. 

This was a very easy quilt to make because I used Pellon's Wonder-Under to applique the pieces (I was out of Heat & Bond Lite and, as far as I know, you cannot buy it locally since JoAnn's tanked). All of the fabric came from my stash except for the border print (which is also on the back). This was also another adventure in free-motion quilting of the appliques and I've learned that I need to warm up on something that doesn't matter before I put the actual quilt under the needle. It's getting better, but I still have a long way to go before I perfect my technique (if ever). That's ok. I still plan to master digitizing quilting designs in my embroidery software. I also added straight lines in the background using a 30-degree diamond grid.

Quilt Details:

• Farm Friends pattern designed by Kids Quilts
• Size - 36-1/2" x 48"
• Threads - a little bit of Aurifil and Filtec, and a lot of Sew Fine 50 wt.
• Batting - Pellon 80/20 cotton/poly blend
• Machine Embroidery - I digitized all of the facial markings for each animal, the wool texture on the sheep and the tails on the pigs using Embrilliance StitchArtist 3.
• Applique - all pieces were cut by the ScanNCut after scanning the applique patterns, importing them to Embrilliance and creating the FCM (SVG) cutting files. Pellon WonderUnder was adhered to the fabrics prior to being cut on the ScanNCut utilizing the rotary blade. The appliques were fused to the background, then secured with a blanket stitch. 
• Binding - the fabric is a bonus leftover from the backing of the Antelope Canyon quilt.

So, two things I would do differently if I ever make this quilt again (or another with similar elements). Machine applique: straight raw-edge all the way. Faster and easier; enough said. Burying quilting knots: another UGH! That took forever! From now on I'll be securing the beginning and ending with tiny stitches. Geez. 

I know of at least one more baby quilt I need to make and that baby is due, I think, in November. It's a girl. I don't have anything in mind yet for what I want to make, but if I can pull a light, medium and dark of some girly-girl colors (which I have very little of), I think a gingham quilt would be really cute. We'll see.

Stay tuned to see what happens next--go make!