This is my 6th baby quilt commission in less than 6 months. And you know what? Each time I am faced with designing and making a baby quilt, I go about it differently. Sometimes I go through my sketches, sometimes I look at old quilt books, and sometimes I look at quilts that I've recently liked on social media.
For this one I literally opened the curtain on the closet where I store my fabric and began going through my larger cuts of fabric...looking for potential pieces for a quilt backing. I fairly quickly settled on the low-volume pirate print (see below).

The person commissioning the quilt mentioned that the baby's room was blue. I looked in that section of my stash first, and my eyes fell on all the blue scraps and strings that were left over from my numerous recent blue quilts (see here, here,  and here). It didn't take long for me to decide on some blue log-cabin blocks. I toyed with the idea of using yellow or red center squares, but abandoned that idea and went with navy blue centers and accents of darker blues in the blocks.

I've been making my log-cabin blocks 12" square, and kept with that plan for this quilt.  I did 9 blocks total in a 3 x 3 layout.

I quilted straight lines roughly 1" apart for this project. I like how the straight lines don't compete with or overwhelm the scrappy blocks.

I had just enough of my penguin scraps to bind this guy (also bound this quilt with them).  These penguins backed my Magnolia Mystery Quilt, so I'll always have them there, but let me tell you: make sure you love every fabric that you use to back a quilt!  Why?  Because when you trim your quilt, you'll have a significant amount of scraps left over from trimming that backing.  Sometimes it feels like those scraps from backings go on and on forever.  I'll be a little sad to have them gone from my stash (both yardage and scraps), but it also feels good to have used them up.

This quilt finishes at 36" square and will make a nice floor mat or stroller quilt. I hope that it gets lots of use and love!

Back in 2013 I finished a "value diamonds" half-square triangle quilt in turquoise and gray. It was one of a couple of turquoise quilts that I made between 2012 - 2015. After that series of 6 quilts, I was tired of looking at and working with turquoise so I avoided it for 9 years or so.
That original HST diamonds quilt was the first quilt that I entered in a quilt show (a small local one), and was one of the first that I ever sold.

Recently, the buyer for that quilt reached out and asked if I could make another one! I think it's fun to revisit a past project and make slight tweaks. For my 2021 version I stayed with the same turquoise + gray + low-volume fabric palette, but tweaked the border design.

I quilted this quilt on my home machine and took the opportunity to do more orange-peel quilting - but this time I quilted through every-other diagonal. I talk about orange peel quilting more in my blog post for my Ocean Waves Quilt. For this quilt, I love how the circles are so much more clear. You can really see the quilting on the back of the quilt too!

I bound the quilt with another two-tone stripe binding. I attach binding using my machine, and below you can see that sometime it isn't quite perfect (I went over the binding on the front in the corner there). Oh well. I love how it looks on the back, I love how quick it is, and I love how it lasts.  I used to finish the binding on my quilt by hand and I do have one or two old quilts where the binding has come un-sewn.

Quilt Details:
This baby quilt finishes at 36" square. I made the border out of 2" x 4" (finished) rectangles this time, and 2" finished corner squares.  I used 32 pairs of fabrics to make my half-square triangles, and they finish at 4" square.
You can see all of my turquoise quilts at #myrthdoesturquoise.
Thanks for stopping by!

This is my second commissioned baby quilt for 2021, and my second sawtooth star baby quilt in a year. I had every intention of making a very different quilt, but I found my way back to this scrappy goodness. The person commissioning the quilt wanted scrappy, so that is what I did!! I did another version of the 12" floating sawtooth star block - this time with all miss-matched scrappy backgrounds. 

All of these fabrics came from my stash, with the exception of the darkest blue fabric.  I decided to go with predominantly blue low-volume fabrics for the stars - I have quite a few of those in my stash, but I rarely use them because I prefer black or gray low-volume fabrics when I'm doing a scrappy low-volume quilt.

I quilted straight lines on this quilt on my home machine. I think that curvy quilting (like my last Ocean Waves quilt) would have been too flowery and feminine for this litte-boy quilt.  Straight lines can provide good texture with out being too much of a distraction from a scrappy pattern.

The backing is a directional (see the foxes!) lt. blue on navy polka-dot fabric from Riley Blake and really was the inspiration for the whole color-scheme for this quilt.  Some of my pattern-matching for piecing the backing was a little off - but nothing you could notice from the back of a galloping horse!

I had enough of the blue penguin fabric to bind this quilt and I love the little penguins that peek out.

Quilt Details:
16 blocks that are made of 4" finished squares and themselves finish at 12."
The quilt finises at 48" square.
This quilt is very similar to my Pink Saw-tooth Star Baby Quilt.
You can see more pictures of this quilt on my Instagram account @handmademyrth