Finish Report :D Baby English 1.0 w/Book Set

Another finish that I'm so in love with.  :D

Baby English 1.0
40" x 40"

This quilt is for my youngest sister, who's about to have her first baby. It's one of this year's rare not-UFO/NETY projects. I knew I wanted to do a mix-and-white chevron or diamond HST layout so I could play with some cool Free-Motion Quilting in the white bands.I also needed to stick to stash during this UFO/stash-busting year. Plus, there is ZERO fabric budget for at least another 4 months of wallet tightness. Moving and then unexpected attorney costs will do that!

So, in my stash I found yards and yards of this fun Owl and the Pussycat fabric. Grabbed some blues to play with it, grabbed that shrinking Kona-snow bolt I'd bought on a super-sale a couple years ago, and went to work.

My inspiration was this chevron quilt made by Kathy at Tamarack Shack, who was totally cool with me mimicking the quilting.

But then I wanted to make my fmq coordinate with the novelty print, which has these bead-looking strands and the sailboat-on-the-sea thing going. (Mastering the spirals fill will have to wait.)  So I did rows of pearls against the blue bands to make those pop out more and put wave-evoking spirals down the centers. I free-hand marked those somewhat, because I couldn't stitch them out with consistent spacing otherwise. I did use cotton thread (that's the 50wt Aurifil there), which pulls minky fluff through from the back. You can see the blue pops in the stitches. But in this particular case, it had an enhancing effect, so I didn't use poly thread to get away from that. (I don't want this effect on the current FMQ work, which also has a minky back, so I'm using a poly thread there. More on that in a couple weeks.)

I just love the dimensionality created by the simple single-line quilting down the blues. You can kind of see here how they pop out so well:

The batting is a thin poly, but it's coupled with a minky back, which adds to the puff. It's about the same as the puff you'd get with a thick poly and a normal quilter's cotton back. I am always completely enchanted with the quilting on a minky back!

I had enough of the blue plaid left to use that for the binding. Turned out great!

As I was cutting the blues, I thought "I really need to try to use more of this print!" (There's this *crazy* yardage of it - something like 8 altogether. No clue what I was thinking. I must have picked it up at a yard sale or something.)  So I decided to make a tote to go with the quilt.  

And then, of course, I needed to get the book to go *in* the tote to go with the quilt. And I found a hard copy with cover art that goes with the fabric so perfectly!  

I used Poppyseed Fabric's tutorial here. Tweaked it a little to incorporate some of the left-over HST's, which I'd made using the 8-at-once method that Lynn describes here. So fast!!!

Now I'm just waiting for a name to do the label, and then this set will sail off to Texas.  :D

(Selma says: "Hi! Whatcha doin'?!"

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Linking up at

Michelle's "Let's Make Baby Quilts!"

Thearica's "It's a Saturday Sharing Day!"

TGIFF

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday