fat eighths baby quilt

 Okay, so this is my first attempt at a blog and I am pretty sure that nobody will look, but I know that I look online a lot for pictures of my next quilt and I finally decided that my pictures were also worth posting.  I have only been quilting for 4 or 5 years or so but recently most of my choices for what I do next have come from pictures that I find online. 

This first quilt that I have finished to post a picture of is below.  This is also the first quilt that I used a package of fabrics for.  I ordered a group of fat eighths and then added the white fabric to go with it.  To be honest, I loved how it turned out, but it might be a little to matchy (I know this is not a word, but oh well) to me.  I really like to pick out the fabrics and coordinate everything so not really doing that meant it was not quite as fun for me to do the quilt.  I also like my quilts to be just a little crazy or bright or something and this one didn't do that, so in retrospect I am not sure that I will order fabric again this way.  Just in case somebody wants to do a similar quilt I ended up cutting the fat eighths into 2.5" strips and sewing them together with a white piece of the same width.  Then I cut the three strips that were sewn together into 6.5" squares and then just alternated them back and forth.  I accentuated the zig-zag idea in the way that I organized the blocks and in the way that I quilted with the darker color through the white fabric. 

I recently got a new machine, an Elna excellence 760 and am totally in love with it!  I like to use fun stitches to quilt with and this next picture shows two of them.  I was really happy to find the cherry stitch to coordinate with the fabric.

As you can see I used variegated thread and I really like the effect it had on this quilt.

Finally I used a piece of flannel for the back.  I like to do a lot of fun things with the back, but this time I just found a nice piece of flannel.  I think that putting soft fabric on the back of a baby quilt is nice for the baby.  When I send them out of state I don't always do this as flannel can be really warm, but here in Oregon the flannel is nice most of the year!

Okay, so here you can see how it coordinates. 

I think that I will be able to find a few more pictures of past quilts that I will post.  I also just recently finished a quilt that I am very happy with and is very original.  When I remember to take a photograph I will post that one as well. 

Well, here's hoping that somebody sees the picture and is inspired in some way...that is usually how I decide to do my next quilt.