Baby quilt progress!

A few days ago, I wrote about my futile attempts to properly personalize a baby quilt for a customer here. I’m happy to report that on Day 2 of playing around with my embroidery machine, it all came together nicely!

huh? What could that strange noise be?

I ended up embroidering the names on scrap fabric, measuring them, and then marking off the measurements on the fabric for the quilt. Since I had to embroider the first name and middle name separately (meaning, I had to do the first name, and then take the hoop off and move it over to do the middle name); I had to mark the overall center, then measure off how much space the whole name would take, and then mark off the center for each name....let’s just say it involved way too much math, but I survived it. In the spirit of “measure twice, cut once” I obsessively re-measured about half a dozen times in the hope of embroidering just once. It worked! :)

Handy tip: for washable projects, use Crayola Ultra-Washable fine tip markers. Washes right out, easier to mark with and see than chalk, and doesn’t rub off like chalk.

I was so delighted! Now for the easy part of sewing together the pieces. Pixie was happy to assist, because she loves taking charge of the pincushion.

This was the first time I’ve showed her how to properly pin fabric together and let her try it. Normally she just hands me pins.

I swear I’m the Pied Piper for all the small creatures in the house.

I left off at that point, and the next day did a little more work:

Let’s all jam into Mommy’s sewing room! Of course she can just work around kids and dogs!

I wouldn’t have it any other way :)

Variety in the form of kids “decorating” whatever I’m working on...

When the kids were really little, the only sewing-related thing I would let them do all by themselves was lint rolling. (Well, that, and play with pincushions. I’m a strange mother I guess). Pixie has it fixed in her mind now that lint rolling is HER particular job, and grabs the lint roller whenever she wants to impress me with How Very Helpful she is.

This evening I pushed myself to get the top, fleece middle layer, and flannel whale-printed backing all pinned together and ready for quilting stitches, but I literally just had an AUGHHHH moment when I reviewed this pic, because the back is upside down compared to the printed middle block on the top! This is why you don’t do important things when you’re tired!

Think anyone would really notice?

Looks like I’ll be taking all those pins out tomorrow. Still, not bad work considering I’ve mostly been in bed sick this weekend. All I have to do is redo the pinning, quilt it, and bind it!

Hope you enjoyed the photos :) Thank you for reading!