My Heather Bailey Quilt

This is one of the projects I did for a Christmas present and couldn't show as I didn't want the recipient's Mum to see it too early. I made this quilt for my new niece, Amie Grace. She was born at 4.24 am on Saturday 10 th January. I feel so privileged to have been there at her birth, and to have cut her cord. It is something I shall remember with awe, for the rest of my life.
My admiration for my Sister sky rocketed to new heights.

When I decided to do this quilt I knew I couldn't use pink. Not because Amie's sex wasn't known, but because I'm just not that comfortable with pink. I know, shock horror, but I'm just not a pink girl. Anyhow, when I saw the talented Heather Bailey's Pop Garden, I knew I'd found my fabric. So feminine but bold, and clear, and the shapes of the flowers shout opulent. And of course there's Aqua in there, and a most beautiful and fancy paisley. These are the 3 piece's I chose (I mean, of course, fell in love with).



I didn't want to cut up the big flower print, so decided to do big squares and the placement of the other squares just fell into place. It had to be red sashing, and I found the exact colour and quantity in my stash. I also found some beautiful, soft, small red and white gingham, so these are the final fabrics. I was toying with the larger gingham for the binding, but thankfully decided against it in the end.



This then is the top finished, I decided to do the squares as diamonds, so that they form (loosely I'll admit) a kiss. Never ending love from her Aunty Mandy. The quilt is half quilted in this picture. I decided to stitch in the ditch, then worried it wouldn't be enough quilting. I can't afford professional quilting and so had to do it myself.


I don't think I can explain how I quilted within the squares so here's a picture. I hope you can make out the stitching lines. Basically it ended up looking like a fancy star in the larger square of the quilt. It's not finished in the picture, I kept stitching the squares and triangles and did circles (eek, so tricky) in the centre of all the large daisy's.



I don't have a picture of the finished quilt as I had to finish it in England and forgot to take this all important picture. The binding I eventually used was a tone on tone floral, which was a light old goldly nearly but not quite orange colour. There is a small amount of this colour in the paisley print, first picture of post, middle fabric top left.

I really like how this quilt turned out, I haven't made many (like 3), but, as with most fabric lovers, have plans for many, many more. Hopefully the first one I make for my bed I'll be able to have quilted professionally.