Spring Bees Baby Quilt

This baby quilt was made for a new niece way back in March. March! I am still a little puzzled about why I have not blogged about this yet, because it is super gorgeous:

Right?

I originally pieced this in Springtime last year (about this time of year, in fact!), using a simple half-square triangle (HST) block.

The hourglass shaped motif in the centre really pops out!

Have you ever tried finishing the edges of the quilt without using binding? This time I decided to seam the backing fabric directly around the edges of the quilt top, just like sewing up a pillowcase.

With this technique, the quilting happens at the end, and can go right up to the edges of the quilt!

Here’s a rough guide to how to put this together:

• Pin-baste the quilt top to the batting, then
• Sew on the backing, leaving a gap to turn inside out.
• Turn inside out!
• Smooth and re-pin the basting through all the layers.
• Quilt.

This worked nicely for a baby-sized quilt, but I’d think twice about doing it for something larger. There is a lot of room for things to shift about during the inside-out wrestling phase! Plus you can’t trim the quilt back to square if the quilting creates an uneven edge.

Here’s the final look once I’d completed the quilting:

You can see how the areas with closer quilting lines end up drawing the quilt edges in. I like this effect, here. 🙂

I went for some strong linear quilting in the white space to completely destroy the line of the sashing border seams. These are now almost completely invisible!

It took me a very long time to decide how to treat the corners. I wanted to be a lot bolder with some free motion quilting, but I ended up settling on a bumble bee motif from a tutorial by Lori Kennedy.

I think I did a reasonable job for my first stab at free-motion quilting motifs! There is another bee in the middle of the central hourglass, too, but it is not so easy to spot. 🙂

This quilt is backed with a pale yellow flannelette sheet, to be super snuggly. I hope it has seen a lot of use in its new home with my niece!

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday! 🙂