“Joyburst” Baby Quilt

There’s something wonderful about making a baby quilt.

Mostly I love this because I can take a creative idea and play about with it, without needing to design for an epic-sized project. And this one I made entirely from scrap!

My inspiration for this quilt was this quilt by Karen Griska. I loved the riotous colour in this quilt and the way the radiating stripes look a bit like crushed peppermint candy!

Whilst I would have loved to recreate that effect, I was working from scrap stash, and there was a bit of a time incentive 👶🍼. I decided to stick with a piecing method I’m familiar with — stack and slash.

A pairs of blocks …

… this one I pieced incorrectly!

For each pair of blocks I chose two highly contrasting squares of scrap fabric, then I laid one on top of the other and cut diagonally through both blocks. Each seam then joins two contrasting edges together.

After the first couple of blocks I discovered the best angles to use for the radiating lines. The blocks shrunk significantly in size due to the piecing required!

To make the finished quilt large enough to be used as a baby throw quilt I added a bit of yellow gingham sashing, which really made the crazy sunburst blocks pop out.

I quilted this with an all over spiral design, except on the sashing where I used some wonky parallel lines. Would you believe it took as long to quilt the sashing as the whole main body of the spirals?

I love the wonkiness of all the elements in this quilt. I used my darning foot throughout because it’s a fiddle to change it over to my regular walking foot. I even did this for the “straight” lines that divide the quilted sections!

Once again, the quilt backing is an old flannelette baby wrap that was leftover from when my kids were teeny. I really hope my friend loves the colours! I left my comfort zone in mixing greens, reds and purples together. I do think it came up absolutely smashing!