Quiltingboard Forums - Sailboat Quilt made using Baby Clothes & Flannel

My cousin’s son “R” recently proposed to a sweet young lady “A” who has a little boy. He asked if he could pay me to make a quilt out of her little boy’s baby clothes as a Christmas surprise. He knows I’m a newbie, but was quite enthusiastic anyway. There was no way I would charge him for the quilt though: I used to take care of R when he was little, and on top of that, he is a U.S. Marine.

<O:p</O:pR wasn’t able to pinch the clothes and mail them to me until Thanksgiving. When I opened the box my heart went in my throat. I had forgotten that most baby clothes were knit fabrics … one of my sewing downfalls.

<O:p</O:pWe laid all the clothes out on the bed and brainstormed how to make them into a quilt. Everyone in the family got in on the process. We realized that it had to be all about A’s memories and, accordingly, that each motif needed to be highlighted. Some of the ideas we came up with were kites, hot air balloons, and sailboats. We then learned that A works at a marina, which won the vote for the sailboat quilt.

<O:p</O:pThe knit fabrics were sown onto a paper foundation pattern I made of a sailboat and paired with polka dot flannels. This solved the stretching problem all the way up until the paper had to come off for the quilting stage. I used a walking foot and quilted with SID, but still ran into troubles with stretching at this stage. Oh how I wish the Quilting Newsletter about the secrets of making T-shirt Quilts had come out before I made this quilt. But then again, if I had backed the knits with interfacing, the quilt wouldn’t have turned out as drapey and incredibly soft. The quilt is backed with a super cuddly Minky.

It is far from perfect and I made mistakes, which there was no time to undo because the delivery date got moved forward a week and I barely finished it in time. I was beside myself over having to send out a quilt that I could have done better.

<O:p</O:pThe response I got from R & A over this quilt was unbelievably terrific. They both wrote beautiful and heartfelt thank you letters. R thanked me repeatedly and told me it was exactly what their Christmas needed and A wrote to ask me if she can give me a big hug when we meet. Neither one of them seems to notice all the mistakes.

<O:p</O:pR had something special he wanted to say on the labels. In English, it means “My Hope” & “My Love”. After much thought, I made his words into candy hearts. I found a website that will let you make virtual candy hearts and download the images for free! I printed them out on an EQ fabric sheet. Here is the website in case you’d like to have fun with it too:http://www.cryptogram.com/hearts/

I'll probably need to add the pictures gradually. The first is our little Pip, helping us inspect the baby clothes. The rest speak for themselves.