Preppy Baby Quilt - Under the Perry Tree

Hi! How’s everyone’s new year going? Things are pretty good here. Friends are having babies, so I have projects. Works out pretty well.

This quilt is for a friend that I met a homeschool co-op the kids and I attended while we lived in Washington. Keelin worked for her in the nursery one period each Friday. After we moved to Korea she got in touch with me saying that they were coming here too. I didn’t even know they were military! After she and her family got here I found out that they were expecting their fourth child, a girl to be precise. Yay! A reason for a quilt!

I’ve had the pattern for “Preppy Quilt” from http://abrightcorner.com pinned for a long while and thought it was about time to give it a go. I have a good amount of fabric built up so I don’t have to run to the fabric store every time I want to make a quilt. I chose an aqua, two pinks and a green for the blocks and a blue with white polka dots for the sashing. I have no idea why the picture of the fabrics will not load, but you’ll see them in use, so no biggie.

The pattern calls for cutting out a bunch of 3.5 inch squares of the colors and 1.5 by 3.5 inch pieces of the dark blue and sewing them all together to make the blocks. I have a hard time keeping my pieces lined up straight when I do that, so I went off script and did strip piecing. It’s so much faster and easier for me.

I cut the colors 3.5 inches by the width of the fabric and the dark blue 1.5 by the width of the fabric. Then sewed them together.

I did the same for both sets of colors.

Those then were cross cut into 3.5 inch pieces.

I then took one of each set and put a longer dark blue strip in between them and sewed them up. And viola! We have a block!

Those colors are so far off! Yuck!

It was at this point that I realized that my white fabric had black ink marks randomly spotted in the middle of it. I cleaned up my mess, took an advil for my headache and called it a day.

The next morning my headache was gone, but it was replaced with a major brain fog. I made my way to Happy Quilt for some white fabric, (so much for not having to go to the fabric store) then back home and got to work.

I really should not have been sewing, or mathing, that day. I cut wrong pieces and too many correct pieces and ended up wasting a bunch of the fabric. I finally did manage to get my white blocks made though in the same process as the colored blocks. But with the bad cuts I did not have enough to do the triangle pieces. Grrr!

Here are the blocks laid out.

Another trip to Happy Quilt was made to find the white I had just bought. I went to the white section and it wasn’t there! I searched all over and couldn’t find it. A quick prayer and my eyes were opened to it sitting in the wrong section right in front of me. Ahh, relief.

Triangles in and blocks sewn into strips was next.

Strips were sewn together and BAM! Quilt top done.

Now for the part that I don’t like- quilting the layers together. My sewing machine has a very small opening for fabric to fit through so it’s always a chore to get all the layers through without twisting them out of place. But, I got it done. Trimming the excess came next.