Comma Baby Quilt

5/2/2014

I was busy last week on my stay-cation, and on the Tuesday I went to Sew and So's at Bungay with my friend Helen (she's a wonderful quilter, and I'm always in awe of her beautiful work!). I needed some fabric to make a baby quilt for a boy, and spotted some mini-charm packs of this bright, modern, funky range called Comma by Zen Chic for Moda. I really liked the idea of a black and white backing, so chose this print for the back (599 Numbers by Henley Studio for Makower UK), and teamed it with this bright lime green polka dot fabric for the binding. I used a tried and trusted pattern that's a free download from the Moda Bake Shop website called Pure Baby Boy, and used these mini-charms instead of strips from a Jelly Roll for the pieced panel...

...it's really difficult to find white tone-on-tone fabrics that aren't florals, so I was really pleased to find this geometric style fabric at Quilters Haven (it's by Robert Kaufman). As you can see it was really blustery on the day I did a quick photoshoot...

...lots of rows of straight quilting 0.5" apart gives a lovely ribbed effect to this quilt, and I've used white Aurifil quilting thread and a Schmetz Topstitch needle size 80. Aurifil thread sews absolutely beautifully, and my Bernina loves it...

...it's a good idea to have your wadding a bit wider than the quilt top, and the backing fabric a bit wider than the wadding. I bought a king size pack of Quilters Dream select weight wadding from Quilters Haven at the weekend - this is much more economical than buying smaller packs! This black and white backing fabric looks super with these rows of white quilting, and made a great alternative to the Jelly Roll strips used in the original pattern...

...a label is sewn into place on the back of the quilt, and after being machined onto the front of the quilt, this bright spotty binding is hand stitched into place with ladder stitch. These binding strips were cut 3.5" wide, and I used the double fold method of binding...