Disappearing Nine Patch a la Baby

I don't want to alarm anyone, but I sewed something. It's that secret thing I couldn't show you because I think the person I made it for reads my blog (but I'm not really sure) and of course I couldn't give away the surprise before the baby shower. But that's over, and now I can. So I shall.

The light colors made this really difficult to photograph, but it's so soft and pretty looking. A disappearing nine-patch quilt has to be the second easiest quilt you can make (the easiest being simply sewing a bunch of squares together).

The only difficult part of this was choosing fabrics. My cousin and his wife don't want to know the gender of their boo, but did talk about their plans for the nursery. I did want to do something a little bit different, maybe a little bit brighter with a touch of a vintage look to it. But I could just not find the fabrics that seemed right for this. And I feel like a lot of kids' fabrics are decidedly gender-specific. I found a gazillion and seven fabric combos that were totes adorbs, but were absolutely boy or girl.

I've noticed that if I go for a marathon sewing session I end up with a wicked headache as my posture goes awry and I don't notice until I'm on the fast track to Exedrinville. So I broke this down into steps. One night I cut the fabrics, another I sewed the block rows together, then the blocks, and so on. It felt like it took forever to make, but at the same time like it was more efficient.

My seams all matched up just right (for the most part), and I didn't face any issues with the quilting. I was originally going to sew just outside of the main seam lines both horizontally and vertically. But I like tighter quilting, so I threw in some diagonals as well. I could have kept going, but I didn't want to overdo it and end up with a stiff baby quilt.

Isn't the backing fabric so cute? I tried to make the front more in keeping with this, but it wasn't going to happen. I don't think I've ever done such a perfect job of quilting--no puckers, no dragging, no intentional sewing of other parts to the back. Just nice and easy. My machine didn't even give me any sass.

I don't do the best job at straight-stitching on a binding, and I didn't think I had enough time to hand-stitch it, so I went with my favorite method of using one of those rarely used fancy stitches for the binding. I washed it and line-dried it and packaged it up.

I was so happy that she loved it. I couldn't decide if I wanted to crochet a blanket or make a quilt, but I'm glad I went this route as someone else made a blankie and a little layette set.

I'd forgotten how much I enjoy making small quilted things. Bed quilts make me curse and question my sanity, but baby quilts are fun. Several years ago my sister gave me a pastel colored jelly roll that I haven't used yet. But I came across a few free patterns where I can make two quilts out of one jelly roll. Sounds nice and doable. So I'll probably have that finished and ready to share sometime in the next five or so years.