Basting

Matthew quilt 1, originally uploaded by alisoninlondon.

I really despise basting, and know I'm not alone in my hatred of it. But baby quilts, well they're a dream! It's over quickly, and there's no need to move furniture. Heck, I can even use off cuts of cotton batting from other projects - no joins even...

This quilt was so fun to do. I've shown pictures of it finished to friends, in fact pregnant friends, and they all kind of go - meh. They like it, but they don't *love* it. I do. But I look at each of the fabrics and remember where I bought them from, and it's a trip back into time.

There's bits there from almost every quilt show I've ever attended, and I have attended quite a few. I love the spots, and the stripes and the plains, but the real beauty is in getting to use pieces of my treasured Heather Ross and other novelty prints in the smaller squares where I think they look the best.

And the textures. Well, there's regular cotton, the lovely soft cotton poplin, double gauze, linen, linen/cotton mix, and even some of Prints Charming's charming hand screen prints in there. There's Amy and Kaffe, Heather, Dick, Jane and a few bits of generic old gingham thrown in for good measure. Robots, buses, boats and firetrucks... oh I hope little Matthew gets as much enjoyment over the years from it as I did making it, but it's doubtful :-)

And the back? Well, I used the back of one of Prints Charming's Free Spirit prints. I liked the muted-ness of the back of the fabric. Another thing I love - this quilt has both the FS printed version of that fabric in the squares ^and^ the hand screen printed version of same thrown in there. It makes me happy indeed.