Monday, March 25, 2013

Thomas the Engine Baby Quilt

Baby Quilts...Oh what fun to make.....

Ah, Spring as come, so the calender says.  So what better time to spend your afternoon but curled up in your favorite quilt, watching TV or reading a book.  Well, I know a sweet little baby boy that is wrapped up in his quilt taking a nap.

I had designed a Mother Goose baby quilt a while back for a little girl.





Well, she had a brother, and I wanted to make something in the same line but yet different just for him.  So I came up with a Thomas the Engine idea.  I dug into my little boy prints and came up with these:




Then I got out my paper and drew Thomas the Engine to the size that I wanted.


I carefully traced it onto a larger white square of fabric.  Next, I got out my crayola crayons and colored in just a few places to set it off.  Note:  When coloring in a design, remember not to color in too much, it takes away from the picture. 




The next step was to relax in my chair and put in a good movie.  This is when I where I will embroider each line that I drew.  I used 2 strands of black embroider thread for this design.  It had a lot of close lines and I wanted each one to be shown.




Now it was time to cut out my fabric.  I wanted to make the same blocks as the pink Mother Goose that I made for his sister.  Only in blue.  So I cut out the fabric and got everything all ready to sew together.





I made a modified chain block first.  There is a total of  4 of these blocks.
 



Then I sewed a white strip to each of the printed strips.  Pressed toward the printed fabric and then cut them all to a 2 1/2" X 4 1/2 in pieces.





Then sewed them all together.  These will be my filler block.




Now that I had those blocks....I wanted to make a corner block with the boys name and birthday on.  So I wrote it out and embroidered the blue letters.   I came up with this:  




This would be the bottom corner block.  I now put them all together.  Then I quilted it in an all over stipple pattern and put a scrappy binding on.  (this is a great way to use of the left over fabric used in a quilt)



                                                             Total size is 45" X 45"




Next was to make a label for the back.  I found a real nice poem for a boy and came up with this:




So what have you been making this year so far?  Anything special?  Leave me a comment, I would love to hear from you.

HAPPY SPRING EVERYONE,

HAPPY QUILTING.........

To get special designed quilts or to see my gallery, check out my site at: http://janesquilting.com

3 comments:

Marjorie's Busy Corner said...

Wow....love them both!

MaryBeth said...

You do fantastic work. I love both of your quilts. I'm sewing the binding onto a baby quilt for my daughter's good friend's first baby. It's 48" square and everyone says "it's so big", but I'm glad I'm not the only one who makes "big" baby quilts, ha ha. The girls met when Nadia was a foreign exchange student here in high school from Germany. My daughter is there now visiting, but I just couldn't get it together to complete the quilt in time, so ship it I must. We're from Maryland, so the quilt features crabs. Have a great day.

My Sister Made Me Do It.... said...

Both baby quilts are adorable! They end up with 2x2" squares, right? I have been looking for a nice pattern for Linus quilts and this one might work if the "super blocks" were 4x4 instead of 6x6....Wow...thanks for sharing a great tutorial!