Baby niece baby quilt.

I'm excited to finally share the baby quilt that I made for my niece, the first baby in the family. I actually gave it to her (well to her parents really since she's only 10 months) at Halloween, but didn't get a chance to share the pictures until now. 

I started the quilt just over a year ago when I went back to Omaha to visit the parentals. The Momcat should know by now that anytime I'm standing in her quilting space and start a sentence with "so I was thinking it might be fun to..." that some new project is about to launch. Just ask her about my brilliant idea to make wall hangings for my bridesmaids and a quilt for my new in-laws before my wedding. 

Momcat and I looked through her extensive collection of books and landed on a churn-dash in a straight setting with cornerstones. I'm proud (or somewhat terrified depending on how you look at it) to report that ALL of the fabric in this quilt comes from the Momcat's stash. I like to think I'm doing my part in helping her use fabric so she can buy more. You can thank me later, Daddo. 

I put the Momcat to work, and by the end of my short visit home we had the whole top pieced together, with just the border left to sew on. 

Each block had a fussy cut fairy in the middle of it, with more fairies appearing in the corner stones and in a corresponding print on the backing.

 I worked on the quilt off and on while the N-boy was in Russia. A couple of other projects (Prairie Sewn Companion) kept me busy and out of trouble during this time too. Finally after the N-boy came back and we settled into the Fall semester I set out to finish it in time for the Halloween party.

I'm SUPER proud of how it turned it. This was my first real-project attempt at free motion quilting and it was lots of fun to work on. Except for when my thread kept breaking. That was less fun.  But I"m  happy with it and I hope that niecy-niece loves it.

I did a swirly-loopy-vine in the sashin and pebbling in the cream and gold rectangles in the center. I also did stitch in the ditch to stabilize the whole thing before I started. In the borders I did a simple meander. I got a TON of help and inspiration from the materials on Leah Day's blog. She's an amazing quilter and her videos and blog posts made me positive that I could do this.

It's a little hard to see in this photo, but the back print has fairies in the center with more of the sashing fabric framing it like a picture frame. I used the same pink for both the border and the binding.

 I'm actually looking forward to working on quilting more of the tops that are languishing in my closet now. The free motion quilting wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, and it made me feel really good to get a project that was important to me out the door to its intended recipient.