Wednesday, July 2, 2014: Easy Toddler Quilt II

I wanted to do another lightweight quilt for Babygirl.  The way I look at it, you need at *least* two of each bedding item for a small child!  (This is helpful on bedding change day, and also in case of emergency.)

I made Babygirl the easy toddler quilt not too long ago, and she loves it!  It has birdies, purple, AND Mommy made it: what could be better??

This one is a variation of that project.  The fabric is a flat sheet from the Company Store (it was a sheet) and I wish I had bought more of it because it is really cute and I love it; unfortunately it is no longer available.  I previously made a duvet cover for Babygirl with the rest of the fabric.  Obviously, after making one toddler-size duvet cover I had some fabric left over.  I also bought one matching pillow case at the time that I bought the sheet.  It took me weeks of searching online to find this colorful butterfly fabric.

I did not want to do the same quilting pattern because I thought with the busy fabric a simpler quilting pattern would be easier on the eyes.  Quilting is necessary to keep your layers from shifting.  That being said, quilting does not necessarily need to be continuous.  In fact, there is a method of making quilts called "hand tying" that does not involve stitching.  When you see quilts with yarn ties they are "hand tied".  I was inspired by a pillow at Crate & Barrel to use a method of non-continuous stitching on the second quilt.

Quilting Inspiration

The appearance is similar to hand tying without the (in my opinion) messy looking yarn.  (I've never really been a fan of the look of the yarn.)  I figured I could get a similar look on the quilt with my sewing machine and it wouldn't look too busy for the pattern on the fabric.  Rather than the square pattern here, I thought I would like a diamond pattern.

I started with the same basic instructions in the easy toddler quilt.  Prewash fabric, iron, layer, pin.  I did use polyester batting here rather than cotton, but I'm not sure that made things any easier.  The lack of slippery polyester fabric definitely made things easier this time around.  In spite of the pain in the butt aspect of having to prewash it, I think I would do cotton batting again if I do another one.  Just personal preference--I'm not a polyester fan.

I started marking the pattern for my quilting with my handy dandy drywall t-square.  I drew a grid on the fabric with a disappearing ink fabric marker.  I used the width of the t-square for the width between lines to make my life easier.  That way I just needed to line up the t-square with the last line and draw another line.  When I was done with the first direction, I used the t-square to draw a line at a right angle to the first line and then continued the process in that direction.

Drawing a grid pattern with the handy dandy ginormous drywall t-square.  

Once I had my grid marked out, I started marking the intersections where I wanted to quilt.  If I wanted a square pattern, I could have just quilted every intersection.  Since I do not like to make my life easy like that I used a different color disappearing ink fabric marker to mark the intersections I was going to quilt.  This ended up being every other intersection on the top row, then the opposite (or unmarked) intersections on the next row.

Marking out the quilting pattern; as you can see the blue dots form a diamond pattern.

When all the intersections to be quilted were marked I sat down at the sewing machine.  I used the stitch for sewing on buttons set to the narrowest with for my quilting.  I had the machine do approximately ten stitches per marked intersection  I also used the darning plate to keep the machine from automatically advancing the fabric and I did not use the presser foot (sorry Mom!) to make moving the fabric quicker and easier.  I stitched every marked intersection in a zig-zag pattern.  I found that using the zig-zag pattern I was less likely to miss intersections than stitching straight across.  I also found the threads easier to cut (since I did not cut threads between stitches.)

Quilting done.  Threads still need to be clipped.

Once I was done with the stitching I cut the threads using a seam ripper, cut the quilt to square, zig-zag stitched the edges for durability and bound the edges using pre-made double fold bias tape for the edging..  I used a narrower edging on this one.  That was just my preference for this fabric.

I read a tutorial this afternoon from The Seasoned Homemaker on how easy it is to make bias tape, so I ordered the tool to make two inch bias tape (which will make one inch double fold tape) from amazon.  I was rather unhappy with the feel of the pre-made bias tape (it is 55% polyester...), so I replaced the edging on this quilt with homemade cotton bias tape.  It was kind of a pain in the butt for me, but I am happier with the quality and it matches the shade I made for Babygirl's room a couple years ago.  I also made a narrower version to trim the matching pillow case!

Done!

I also had the bright idea (pintrest inspired project) to make some pillow cases trimmed with fabric to match the quilts for Babygirl.  You can see the pillow case that matches this quilt here.  I am really happy witht he way it turned out!  Hopefully I will have a tutorial for that sometime next week!