Ashley Ann’s Baby Blanket

Hello, there!  So, what’s new?  Me?  Well, a few things, like we now live in Korea and my kids are attending public school.

This last summer was crazy busy.  We needed to get our house ready for renters, sort through all our belongings and decide what was shipping to Korea and what was staying behind in storage and of the items being shipped deciding which of the three loads to send them with (main shipment=slow boat, things we will need first=flight and immediate needs=our luggage.)

Ben reported for duty mid July and did a bunch of military stuff which included classes in Seoul and flying back to the D.C. area for another class.  Then he flew back to us and we spent our last week selling a vehicle, taking loads to the dump (where we even kept loads to take to the dump I have no idea,) cleaning endlessly, saying good-bye to many people and flying out August 20th.  Everything was a whirlwind when we got here and I made an emergency trip to the U.S. and back within the first week of being here.

These last two months I’ve spent in-processing, learning how to find my way around a foreign country, getting involved with groups, making new friends and doing my best to make sure my kids experience Korea.

Anyways, enough about all that. On with the show!

There are a couple things I really like doing and one of them is making baby blankets for friends and family.  I’m about to show you my latest.  It’s for a sweet baby girl named Ashley Ann.  She was born on one of our last days in the States, but seeing as how we lived in Washington and she was born in Louisiana I didn’t get to meet her.

I dug through my box of fabrics and pulled out a bunch of my favorites.  Sets of pinks, blues, greens and purples were chosen.  Many of which I used in my own daughters’ quilts.  I like to cross pollinate quilts.  Not all the fabric from the first round made the cut (no pun intended,) but here is my original selection.

 

 

I decided on a pinwheel block and drew it out.  You can see my sketch in the previous picture.  I drew it out to be four 8″ blocks wide by five 8″ blocks long.  That makes 20 blocks.  Each block requires four bold color pieces at 4 1/2″ by 2 1/2″, four light color pieces at 4 1/2″ by 2 1/2″ and eight white squares at 2 1/2″.  All total I needed 80 color pieces, 80 light pieces and 160 white squares.  Since I had 10 bold colors I cut eight of each and I had two light colors so I had 40 of each of those.  A lot of numbers there, sorry.

 

Next step was to sew the white square onto the end of each piece right sides together at a 45 degree angle from top left to bottom right of the square.  Don’t they look so happy?

 

Then I cut the extra off of the right side of the stitching and ironed them open.

 

 

As you can see I made an obvious mistake.  I ironed the fabric behind the white instead of behind the color.  I did fix it.

Next was to put a dark color with a light color long sides together.

 

 

Once that was all done the arranging began!

 

 

I put two different background pinks in each block in opposite corners.  Then after a little squaring up some scraggly edges I had my blocks ready.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next came the arranging of the squares to make sure all the colors were spread throughout the quilt as much as possible.  I tried turning the blocks so that the same light pinks made their own pinwheels, but decided against it because the background color then became too dominate.  Can you see the difference?  Yes, I do realize that the second shot is of before I made them into full blocks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then the sewing of each row happened. And the sewing of the rows to make a top.

 

 

A trip to the fabric store was in order because I didn’t have enough of any fabric to do a border.  The store is only about a half hour away.  It was a little nerve wracking driving there by myself the first time, but it was nothing compared to the brain scramble I was about to go through while in the store.  Mostly the fabrics are pre-cut into 2 meter pieces and put on the shelves in no order what-so-ever!  There is no blue section or pink section or whatever.  It’s just all together.  I had to fight my urge to organize.  So in order to find the right pink I had to walk up and down all the shelves looking at each package.  See what I mean?

 

I eventually found a pink that I liked for the border and a blue for the binding, but it took a long time!

Here it is with a white and a pink border added.

 

Another trip to the fabric store was in order.  I had a backing piece all ready to go, but I went and made the top 2 inches too wide.  Uggh!  I did find an extra wide pink and white fabric on a bolt.  Guess what the pattern was?  Pinwheels!

So, here it is.  All layers put together, machine quilted, and bound.  Finished size turned out to be 41″ x 49″.

 

 

A bit closer in for detail.

 

 

And one last shot with Little Bit’s teddy snuggled in.

 

I actually made this quilt last month and have been waiting somewhat patiently for it to arrive in Louisiana.  I wanted the momma to be surprised and not see it first here.  I had no idea it would take so long to get there.  The box traveled from Korea to Illinois and circled around there for a while, then it came back to Korea and then sent back to Illinois and circled there some more and finally made it to its destination today.

I hope you enjoyed watching the baby blanket come together.  It was a fun one to make.  I also hope you’ve been inspired to go and use the talent that God has given you to make someone feel loved today.