Making Baby Quilts

Lot's of new babies have been coming our way. Babies means baby quilts. My new favorite pattern is a triangle medley. Here are pictures of the three I have done so far.

Charles' Quilt  A Star is Born

 Baby Bea's Quilt

Ruan's Road to Africa

These quilt are very fun to do. They are scrappy which means there are a lot of fabrics in each. There are some tricks I have discovered and will share with you here in case you want to make one of your own.

1. Select about 20 fabrics that go together. Half are dark and half are light. I vary the scale of the prints and generally work with about three different colors, choosing variations of these   colors. Directional fabrics are not recommended. You can use them but will get half the usable parts.
2. Cut one 4.5 inch wide strip from each.
3. Sew these together at both the top and bottom, along the length of the strip.
4. Using a 60 degree triangle template (Marti Michell has one with a squared tip that makes piecing so easy), I first cut one and then flip the template to cut another. There is very little waste using the template like this. One width produces about 12 triangle.
5. Clip the stitches on the shorter end and open up the triangle which is now a diamond with half dark and half light. 
6. Press to the darker side.
7. Sew four diamonds together to form a larger diamond. You can see this in the above quilts.
8. Start by only sewing one 4-patch diamond set together of each strip set.
9. Put them on the design wall to see which will dominate the quilt. In the above, the dark brown catches my eye. I place these so they move the eye across the quilt. If there are any with a special fabric, then I place these as well so they move the eye across the quilt. Then I sew oher 4-patch diamonds as needed to move the color across. This top only requires 18 4-patch diamonds. The rest are part patches on the sides and top and bottom. I sew these as needed and desired for placement.
10. The larger diamonds are sewn in diagonal rows to complete the top.
11. The finished quilt measures about 38 x 48 inches. I like this size because the backing can be one width of standard fabric. I always try to find something really fun the goes with the top. After all, they are far the newbies.

Linking to Off the Wall Friday