More baby stuff

Unsurprisingly, I have been making a ton of baby stuff. In addition to two complete quilts and the car seat blanket, I have done a bunch of onesies and made a car seat canopy.

First up, the iron on appliqués from Kat. I ironed them in place and then used invisible thread to permanently affix them. I don't trust that iron-on stuff to last.

I'm not sure which one is my favorite, they're all so cute!

Second, my own homemade appliqués. I asked my husband to help me with these and he got surprisingly in to it. He picked out the penguin (I traced it from some picture he found online) and the fabric for the guitar. I did all of these except the cat by hand because I wanted to be able to use different thread colors for each part. Luckily, I remembered this box of embroidery thread my grandma had given me years ago and dug it out of the basement. I forgot how time consuming hand stitching is!

I'm super excited about the sheep made from the sheep fabric I got in Korea

Finally, I made a reversible car seat cover. I sort of mashed together the instructions from here and here for the general sizing. To make it reversible I essentially made giant buttonholes for the velcro straps to go through instead of permanently affixing the straps to the cover. Much to my husband's disappointment you can't really reverse it while it is attached to the car seat. We are pretty sure that it would be physically possible to make that happen, but I am still not sure how. Also, it's way too late.

It is also too late for another good idea he had. I was thinking about using the last iron-on appliqué on this because there were two koalas and it seems silly to have two of the same shirt for the baby. However, I decided to put the koala on before I thought to make it reversible. What I should have done is use both koalas on this so there would be one on each side. Stupid husband, why didn't you tell me this earlier! So now I don't know if I'm going to put a koala on at all because it would be kind of weird to see just the outline from the other side.

Pieced side using the remainder of the math fabric I've been saving for years.
And yes, this baby is doomed to be a nerd!

What I generally consider the inside. 

A close-up of a velcro strap and the slits it flips through to make the cover reversible.

This car seat cover/canopy was the last thing I wanted done before the baby came, so I think I'm done making baby things (for now... ^_^). I still have some more plain white onesies that I can appliqué (I owe my husband a T-Rex one), but they're all like 6 month size so I'm not exactly in a hurry.

Red Baby Complete!

Just in the knick of time I finished up the Red Baby quilt and a matching car seat quilt. They will both be going off tomorrow to await the arrival of my friend's baby in November.

For the blanket I did a fleece backing and straight line quilting using a zig-zag stitch. I also did a machine binding, so this was another quick finish.

The colors are a little off in this pic. It's brighter in person.

You can see the zig zags pretty well from the back.

I made this car seat quilt warmer than mine because my friend lives in Colorado and I heard it's cold there... I used a fleece backing and a layer of batting so baby should be toasty! Despite the small size of this quilt, the basic stipple quilting, and machine binding this was not a quick finish. All those tiny HSTs (each one finished at 1 inch) and the essentially double batting made for some thick seams even though I meticulously ironed them all open. I had quite a few problems with stitches skipping. Usually my strategy for FMQ stippling is to up the tension and floor it so I don't get eyelashing, but in this case I actually had to go slowly.

Thanks again, Panda! You are an excellent test subject.

I was pleasantly surprised with how well the points matched up. I guess all that trimming was worth it!

Linking to TGIFF hosted this week at Anja Quilts.

Finished: Double Pinwheel and Car Seat Quilt

Since the doctor told me last week "if the baby decided to come now, we wouldn't try to stop it," we finally got the car seat and stroller put together. I, of course, immediately used my baby-ish sized panda to test out the car seat quilt I made.

The panda is a better test subject than the cats...

I followed this tutorial from Moda Bakeshop, except I kind of messed it up because the directions were slightly confusing in the middle. Or I wasn't paying attention. Or both. Anyway, I think it turned out cute and it definitely fits the car seat despite being smaller than the 25x35" the directions say it should be. I was able to use some scrap batting, a simple FMQ pattern in the lattice, and one of those decorative stitches on my machine for the binding so the whole thing went together pretty fast.

Close up of binding and ties. I could see velcro also working for this.

The car seat quilt actually uses scraps and leftovers from a basic double pinwheel baby quilt.

Finished size about 30x40"

This quilt got a fleece backing for coziness, spiral and loop quilting, and machine binding. It was another quick finish once the top was together. The fabrics for this are things that I had collected together with the thought that they would go well and the double pinwheel was finally the right pattern for it. All I had to buy was the fleece because I already had the backing for the car seat quilt and the quilting used up some old variegated thread I had.

The nice thing about fleece backing is it doesn't need batting so basting takes like 2 minutes!

Another decorative stitch binding. I believe my husband chose this one. 

Apparently all of my favorite link ups are slowly disappearing, so this is just going to have to be link-less until I can find something new :(