Baby Quilt

I made a quilt for my daughter's crib.  We have a few months until she's born so the crib isn't set up or anything. I just got excited when I found out we're having a girl and jumped on a few baby projects to get them done while I'm feeling good and have some energy here in the 2nd trimester.

So here's Ellaria's quilt, going along with the red and white with turquoise accent theme I'm doing for her corner of the kids room.  There isn't much turquoise at all in the quilt.

The quilt plan is designed by KarrieLynne at Freckled Whimsy.  I found her tutorial at the Moda Bake Shop.

Here's her tutorial for this quilt she named Random Reflections.

I didn't use a Moda kit for my quilt.  I just bought 8 different red/ white fabrics, and cut them in 2.5" strips.  I just needed 1/2 yard for each fabric when using 8 different kinds.

Things I changed from her tutorial were to cut the strips/ squares (once sewn to the plain white strips) only 8.5" long, where her's are 10.5" tall.

I just wanted a smaller quilt that was more rectangular than square.  It just made the total width 10" less than her plan.

This was my finished quilt top.
I decided it needed a border, so I added the 2.5" polka dot border.

So my finished quilt ended up measuring 54" wide and 60" long. 

For the quilt back, I used a thin red blanket I've been cutting up for different projects for a few years.  It wasn't quite wide enough, so I used left over printed fabric strips cut 2.5" wide for the quilt top to make the random stripe down the back.

Once again I used my regular sewing machine to quilt this.  I used the Warm and Natural thin batting and invisible thread.  This quilt job went better than my last quilt.  Machine quilting was easier on this smaller quilt, and I was only quilting straight lines so I could use my walking presser foot.

One of my favorite parts of the quilt is my little signature in the bottom corner.  A few years ago my mom started "signing" and dating all her quilts and I really like that idea, especially since this is for my kid and hopefully a little heirloom she'll keep.  I just use the darning foot and put the feed dogs down to "freehand sew" the text the same way I did with the thread drawings.

"for my ellaria, love Mom, Nov 2010"

This was a fun little quilt, and went pretty quick.  I liked the modern and simple design and was kind of worried the red/ white might look like Christmas, or Valentines, but I think it doesn't seem like a holiday quilt to me, but I am obviously bias.  I imgaine red and white for most people is a weird choice for a baby girl, I couldn't find anything online when I was looking for ideas.  But hopefully when it's all together, it will seem like a little girl-- at least that's what I envision.