Quilt for a New Baby.
I made this quilt in 5 days (I am getting faster at making quilts as I gain experience) as a baby shower gift for a co-worker. I had seen an advertisement for the book "Quilts for People who Still Don't Have Time to Quilt" by Marti Mitchell, which featured this type of quilt on the cover of the book and in the advertisement (I have this book and have used it for several nice quilts and many more ideas). I used scraps left from an 8" year-long fabric swap to cut the 2x5 pieces which make up each block. I sorted them according to light/medium/dark value, and then matched the fabrics in each group - the two outer strips being the same in each block. Then I spread the squares out on my living room floor and arranged them from light in the center to dark at the edges.
The back of the quilt is a more traditional baby-type print that is centered in a white-on-white print. It is the first time I have used a design on the back of the quilt as well as the front, so I was really particular about matching the front and back (paranoid is probably more like it!). But it was really very easy to get close enough that nobody will notice.
The quilt is machine pieced and quilted.
By the way, baby Kara Nicole Whitaker was born on Jan 15, 1999 at 11:26 am, 6 lbs 5 oz, 17 3/4" long, and both baby and mother are well. I saw the baby when she was 8 weeks old at a luncheon, and was able to hold her for a bit - she's a real cutey!!
