"Springy" Baby Blanket - Under the Perry Tree

Surprise, surprise! I have another friend about to bring a baby home. Since it’s just the beginning of April, I found it fitting to sew up a Spring blanket.

I met the soon to be mom of two, Miss Jordana, almost two years ago at PWOC. She was a co-facilitator of the first class I had here. She is so sweet and welcoming and has some of the most amazing stories about her grandmother. I really wish I could have met her too. She sounded like an amazing lady.

I’ve been making a lot of pink and aqua blankets recently, but for this blanket I really wanted to use yellow. What better way to use yellow for a spring blanket than with flowers? I came across a tulip quilt while on Pinterest and while I didn’t like all of the quilt, the tulips were in the right direction. I also didn’t like how they were pieced together, so I set out to design my own pattern.

This is what I started with.

It’s not what I ended with, but I rarely stick to the plan exactly.

The flowers were broken down into pieces that came together to make 6 x 15 inch blocks.

One step at a time the pieces became flowers.

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 6

Next, more pieces became the stems.

Step 7
Step 8
Step 9
Step 10
Step 11

Flower and stem parts were put together to make the flower blocks. Eleven of them in total.

Next came the bunny. I found a picture of a bunny square, once again, on Pinterest. The pattern can be purchased and all the guess work taken out, but I needed it to be 15 inches tall, so the pattern wouldn’t work for me. I did use it as a reference on how to draw the bunny out on paper.

Here’s my drawn out pattern. Look at the list of pieces and sizes on the right! I thought that I would have a hard time making it with all the little pieces, but it was so easy to put together that I’m considering making a blanket just out of bunnies.

I wanted a brown floral for the body and a fluffy white fabric for the tail. I was trying to color it to look like one of the wild bunnies we would see hopping around at my parents’ house, but with flowers on it.

While I was at the fabric store I ran into a friend, Saralynn. She helped me search for about an hour looking for the perfect brown. She confirmed my choice of using a fluffy fabric for the tail, but neither of us could find a pretty brown floral. She helped me for so long that her son had to come in to retrieve her. Her menfolk had been waiting in the van for her. Sorry, guys! I ended up getting a brown swirl, which looks pretty too.

Here’s a really bad picture I took of a bunny at my parents’ house three years ago. You can’t see it’s white tail or how pretty it’s fur is. It was getting dark and I was using a phone to take the pictures so I apologize for the poor quality.

It let us walk right up close to it. Since it was the day before Easter, Little Bit was sure it must be the Easter Bunny getting things ready.

Anyways, back to the project. With so many pieces I would have been overwhelmed if I hadn’t pinned labels to them. Somehow all those little pieces turned out to be the right size! Yay, math!

First came the ears and head.

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4

Then the body.

Step 5
Step 6
Step 7
Step 8

They all came together better than expected to make this super cute bunny. I think the swirl fabric turned out to look better in the end than if I had found a floral.

Next came the change in the layout. I had drawn the tulips in straight lines, but after playing with the blocks for a bit I really liked how it looked with them being offset from each other in a more random arrangement.

Instead of making the background strips go from top to bottom in a straight line, I needed to attach them to the right side of the top and bottom flowers and to the left side of the middle flowers. The flowers were sewn into strips with background added alternately to the top and bottom of the rows, the bunny was inset and a boarder was added on all sides.