Baby Quilts!!!

Lots of steps involved in making a quilt!!

But I decided to keep up a tradition that my mom would always do for good friends who had a baby, and to make my good friends baby quilts, too. So I've been working on for the last few months, and planning for nearly a year, buying the fabric, supplies, etc, on making two first-ever baby quilts, for two friends who had babies, respectively named Joel and Rosa Maria, in the last year.

Here are some snapshots from along the whole process from cutting all the pieces, sewing them together (with plenty assistance from the cats, preparing the back, sandwiching the quilt, basting it, then machine-quilted, then finally finishing the binding... for both quilts (finished tonight, but for attaching the labels on the back :-) )

Piecing together the front for Joel's Quilt, over Christmas break, with my sister working on her architecture quilting project in the background, too!

The front almost done... and Guapo liked it!
The front finished, and sandwiching then basting together the backing, 100% cotton batting, and finished front for Joel's quilt:

Basting this was very humorous, because both cats thought it was an incredibly fun game to watch me pull the long threads through the big basting stitches, so had to carefully watch them, and keep them from attacking the thread :-) Good fun company, staying up late doing this though haha
Spent one long and laborious evening piecing together this ying-yang backing... If anyone reading this has ever machine-sewn a curved or circular seam before, they'd know how hard this is to do.... Cutting it was also a big challenge, because I realized that my themed fabric of the sushi for the white-background one was direction-oriented, so it did matter in what orientation I cut those pieces out, and of course didn't have plentiful meters of it to use, so had some careful piecing-work to do to match up the sushi pattern to make the full consecutive pieces. The black-background Mexican foods fabric was easier, because it wasn't nearly as direction-oriented. I was debating for a while at the start just doing a checkerboard of the two fabrics to make life easier on myself, but I had thought of the harmonious theme of making a ying-yang with these two as soon as I ran into the Mexican fabric when shopping for it one day, because our friends, Rosa's father is from Mexico and her mother is from Japan. I couldn't resist making the ying yang. Also, making the ying-yang shape was interesting--made a paper pattern of it first to pin to the fabric to cut the fabric out right, and it was fun finding how to geometrically construct a ying yang pattern. :-) Try it!Added another border piecing together some scraps of all the fruit and veggie fabrics to Rosa's quilt-- now a snapshot of starting to baste that quilt together.

Machine quilted both quilts with a meandering stitch, Joel's quilt with a navy blue thread. Here's the backing of Joel's quilt, with a print of dolphins swimming in the water, because of how much his mom, my friend, loves swimming :-)

Here's a close-up of the meandering stitch on the oranges on the front of Joel's quilt:
The Finished front of Joel's quilt
The backing of Rosa's quilt, machine quilted with white thread:
A closer shot of the meandering stich on the front of Rosita's quilt...still with the basting stitches in:
A closer shot of the Mexican foods fabric, very fun! The sushi fabric with the meandering stitch done in white, and the basting stitches still in, in black thread:
Another close-up of the ying-yang, those challenging curves, andmatching the seam on that "uni sea urchin" piece of sushi :-), after basting stitches were removed:
Another close-up of the challenging curved seams:
Completed front of Rosita's quilt:

Completed back of Rosita's quilt, minus the label :-)