A Quilt for Sweet Naomi

It’s finished! This plus quilt is the latest baby quilt I’ve made. It’s for my friend Carol’s sweet baby girl, adorably named Naomi like our Mimi.

I first met Carol on a university study abroad trip (the same one where N and I started falling in loooove) and a few years ago her and her family settled in my home town.  We usually get together when the kids and I visit my folks in the summer and it’s always a highlight for me. (It doesn’t hurt that our get together usually involve all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ and foot massages.) When I heard Carol was adding a baby girl to her family of gorgeous boys I wanted to making something for her.

For the quilt top I followed this pattern by Jeni from In Color Order. Cutting out the pieces is my least favorite stage of making a quilt and it was nice to have all the planning and and dimensions worked out for me. Referring to Jeni’s pattern made it easy to change the size of my blocks from 4.5″ to 4″ which worked better for my cuts of fabric.

After I pieced the top I decided to stretch myself (and save some $$$) and machine quilt it myself. I’ve always had my quilts machine-quilted by a professional but last summer I lost my great  work-from-home job and I’m trying to spend less money in general. And since I’m having trouble cutting back on fabric, something else had to give 🙂

I picked a very simple pattern–quilting in a straight line .25″ away from each seam. While there might have been a few (okay, several) curses muttered under my breath during the process in the end I was happy with how it turned out. My lines aren’t incredibly straight, but N said it makes it “charming.”

I decided to personalize the quilt by hand embroidering the baby’s name on the front.  

And I attached one of these personalized labels I ordered online with the most amateur-looking stitching ever (also file under charming?)

And that’s it!  My next project is going to be a baby quilt for my friend Kristin’s sweet baby boy but I have yet to start cutting yet. Once I start making some progress I’ll keep you posted. 

And now since both E and Mimi are taking naps/having quiet time in their rooms so I’m going to sneak up to my own bed for a quick nap so I can hopefully finally get over a bout of food poisioning that has laid me low since this weekend.