Our faces Stitched in Sewing

One problem with procrastination is that it doesn't leave enough time to take decent, comprehensive photos of finished objects. Instead, you end up pulling over on your way to the baby shower, and draping the baby quilt above over the back-seat, and taking what you can get. Then you cram the blanket into a gift bag (along with an Octopus and a book that features an Octopus), and are thankful that you finished it at all.

I started making this last weekend, and finished it up late last night (oh, and put it in the dryer this morning). The pattern is very loosely based on a quilt in Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts and further inspired by Jessica's doll-sized version. Being both lazy and short on time, I didn't cut individual rectangles. Instead, I strip-pieced four or five fabrics into blocks, then cut the blocks into stacks of rectangles. Then I mixed and matched the blocks, and threw in a few single-cut blocks to make it slightly less matchy-matchy. I chose the dark solid brown for good contrast, and to make it less pinky-girly. I think that a mauve or a purple would also have looked good, but I like the brown the best. The back is brown with white dots that is so cute that I almost substituted something else so that I could make myself a skirt out of it to wear to the baby shower. The actual quilting is minimal, because I wanted to retain a very clean look. The "batting" is flannel, so close quilting isn't necessary.

One thing that I learned while making this quilt is that my sewing skills have gotten unacceptably rusty. The fact that you can see the back of quilt fabric in the photo above grates a little, and getting the topstitching to match up was a problem. Yes, this is a blanket that is meant to be used (i.e. vomited on) and washed frequently, and it will hold up just fine. But I was struggling more than I should have to struggle to get less than ideal results, and I think that I need more practice. Good thing that I know 1,000,000 people with babies on the way, and a bunch of new spring skirts to sew. And a wallhanging--I want to make a wallhanging for my office.

Another thing that I learned is that the sewing room, which offered so much promise last summer, is now a pigsty. This summer's project be to whip it into shape, and it will probably involve a lot of work and some tough decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of.

Forget I even mentioned that! Here's a pre-assembly close up of the top:

I think that the single little gnome is my favorite part of this quilt!