Quilting brings me joy.
One of my Nephews and his wife are having a baby very soon. I try to make a quilt for each of the new babies in our family, and I asked Alyssa what theme she wanted for the baby. They are having a daughter and she selected the fabric she wanted me to use.
These types of quilts are pretty quick to put together, but I had to bind the name / heart and edges by hand. I've tried binding quilts on the machine so many times. It's always a fail! I love to hand sew, so I don't mind it, but I just need to figure out how to do it on the machine without messing it up! I did make the binding for this quilt, but the fabric was preprinted in the individual squares.
To personalize it and make it special, I quilted around each square and added a heart with the baby's first and middle name. Then I appliqued the heart onto the quilt front and sewed it in place. The embroidered heart is cut from the same fabric as the backing on the quilt and I used my embroidery machine to embroider the name on the fabric.
If you are interested in getting started quilting, this type of fabric can be helpful. It has built in lines to follow and allows you to practice quilting along the lines. As long as you can sew a relatively straight line, you can quilt this on a machine. If you are interested in hand quilting, it's even easier! Just follow the lines!
The basics of a quilt are a front piece of fabric, a piece of batting (for the middle), a backing material and a binding. You can purchase binding at the sewing store, or make your own!
Hand binding is super simple - just sew the front of the binding to the front of the quilt, and then flip over and sew the back on. I don't sew all the way through both sides at one time. I find I get a neater stitch if I do one side at a time. Like the picture here. It took about 3 hours to bind this one, but I enjoyed every minute of it! As an added bonus, you can listen to a book or radio show or podcast while you do it, two birds with one stone!
I hope this inspires you to give it a go! Let me know if you'd like a more detailed "step by step" showing how to make a simple quilt, to get you started!
Best wishes!
