A Baby Quilt For Harper

Last June we received the news we'd been waiting to hear for almost 2 years - we were finally pregnant! We each have our own story, but like so many others our journey to parenthood didn't come easily. It included months of trying naturally, a false positive/early miscarriage (to this day, we aren't really sure what happened), fertility specialists, testings, and a planned surgery. So we just stopped trying and a month or two later we were expecting - a complete surprise! Naturally I did what any quilter would do and started sewing a baby quilt. In fact, if I remember right, I started sewing before we had even told our parents & family. My plan was simple - stick to gender neutral colors and a clean, scrappy design.

I started pulling gray & aqua scraps and paired it with white & off-white solids - spray starching the fabric as I pressed. Let's be honest, is there really anything better than crisp, freshly starched fabric? For years I've used Mary Ellen's Best Press but just recently started using this kind of spray starch and I absolutely love it - the price point is great, too! From there I started cutting the scraps into different widths keeping the sizes random while still utilizing the most out of each piece.

I started randomly sewing the fabrics together and used my 6x24" quilting ruler to cut the rows into uniform widths. The project went together rather quickly and before I knew it I had enough scrap units for a baby quilt. For the backing fabric I pulled one of my favorite Bonnie & Camille prints - the aqua scallops.

Keeping with the simple, crisp design I opted for a simple Loop design for the longarm quilting. I actually finished quilting this project the week before we had Harper - perfect timing! Normally I prefer a bold binding fabric - like the black & white strip I use so often - but bold wasn't right with this quilt. This low volume, aqua dot came from my stash and was just perfect. If you are interested in how I do my Double Fold Binding check out this tutorial - it's been viewed over 150,000 times making it one of our most popular tutorials.

Harper turned 8 months on Saturday and it's been so much fun using this quilt as she's grown. This quilt is the first of many she'll have and it's already a part of so many memories.