Birthday Quilt | alwaysacraftylady

Oh hi! I didn’t mean to disappear for 2 weeks. I went back to work on March 2nd full time, and then DD1 had her birthday the very same week and my life went a little crazy. But I’ve been hard at work with many things. I still have some clothing items for me to share, but in the mean time I bring you a quilt made for my pretty little birthday girl on her 3rd birthday.

As you might remember from my Quilt Layout post I’d been struggling with how to fit together all the little triangles I’d cut out. I could never get things to line up in a perfect way. I took it to a vote with some of my crafting friends and they overwhelming voted for a more random placement.

I tried to finish it for her actual birthday so she could take it to school, but I was too busy making 3 dozen cupcakes. So she opened it on her birthday party instead. And then at her party it was the very last gift opened and the immediately threw it aside so she could play with her new tea set and doctor kit and OMG Mulan doll instead.

But that’s okay because the next day when she went to school her snuggly blanket went with her and my heart filled at the thought that her momma’s love was wrapping her up tight while she’s away from me during the day. That kid. She’s a cute one.

This quilt was made with fabric from the Princess Life line by Ann Kelle for Robert Kaufman. Such cute fabric, but a little hard to pick a pattern that actually showed off so many larger scale prints. I hate needing to decapitate princesses to make the blocks. The backing is some minky leftover from making the Fairies Quilt. Both came from the fabulous Hawthorne Threads. I have to admit I often look there before any other online shops because they have such a large selection and usually have things available by the yard as well.

Whew, this week has been interesting. Exhausting. DD2 is not sleeping as well at night all the sudden and we’re all feeling the effects after several nights of less sleep.

What was I say? Oh yes. Quilt layout.

So someone asked in the comments of this blog about how I decided to place my fabrics in the Fairies Quilt. Really it isn’t all that hard, just takes some thinking. For this quilt I had nine different fabrics. The first thing I did was look at the scale of the prints.

White – 2 – both large scale

Teal – 2 – 1 large scale, 1 small scale

Yellow – 2 – 1 medium scale, 1 small scale

Burgundy – 2 – both medium scale

Pink – 1 – small scale

In order to best show off the prints, anything large scale needed to be a corner. The small scale needed to be in the center. The medium could fill in where needed. So I place the white and one of the teals in the corners to start and the pink in the middle. Then I played around the the remainder of the colors until I settled on the arrangement you see above. The goal was to make sure no two prints of the same color were right next to each other. In the end you have stacks of blocks that look like this.

Then I just needed to place with the orientation of each square so see what looked best to me. There really is no perfect way to do it. Just a personal preference.

Here you can see two slightly different layouts I tested. The one thing I would do differently next time is to do all the 9 patch squares exactly the same. For this quilt I wanted to be “fancy” and switched the placement of the burgundy fabrics in half of the squares and then when I went to lay everything out I didn’t have each fabric in the right amount for what I wanted. Oh well. Making my own quilts is about the process as much as the product, but perfection is not my goal.

In new project news, I do have a little something I’ve started working on using Princess Life by Ann Kelle. It’s another day care nap blanket for DD1, but I haven’t been able to land on an arrangement I like yet. Have thoughts? Let me know! I am stumped.