Simple baby quilt challenges…

Marny here…choosing fabric is fun. And you think I would have known better than to make such a classic mistake. Let me share my tale. 

Remember the 1 hue 4 fat quarter table runner tutorial from a couple of weeks ago? Jill hinted it could make a nice quilt with background added.  Next thing I know I want to use the idea behind the table runner to make a simple visual statement in a toddler or baby quilt.    

Here are the fabrics I chose Day 1. An adorable giraffe print for the background, and 3 colors found in the print + a cute dot. The dot was chosen because 4 fat quarters were needed for the blocks and adding one more solid seemed jumpy. So far I see two mistakes. Stay with me now… 

The giraffe print is part of Ann Kelle's Urban Zoologie fabric for Robert Kaufman. Love it!

The dot is a Kensington for Quilting Treasures fabric.

Prewashing fabrics in a mild soap is required for baby quilts. Baby skin is too sensitive to expose to the fixatives and dyes used in fabric. 

Numbers doodled trying to make the best use of fat quarters and end up with a baby sized project and have a nice proportion of colors to boot! Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, we don't want the blocks too big or too small, we want them just right! 

Good the washing process is complete! Warm fabric from the dryer is pressed.

Next it was cut into strips and arranged into piles. Note, the four fat quarters were the dot and the solid pink, orange and yellow.

I knew I was heading down the wrong path from the start, but sometimes, while convoluted, the wrong path becomes the right path so I just blasted away.

Here are the two problems.  

• The dot, while very cute, did not work within the blocks on the giraffe background. The dot areas bled into the giraffes without an edge since they shared the common denominator of white in their backgrounds.  This isn't always a bad thing but here it didn't work. 

• AND, the giraffe print itself is too competitive with the blocks.  The scale of the actual giraffes competes with the scales of the strips chosen and it seemed like blocks screamed "look at me" and giraffes screamed "no, look at me".

So what to use instead of the dot in the blocks? What is missing? A range of values is the answer of course. 

A dark has made it into the mix.

Here are the strips cut and ready to make new blocks. 

I'll share more in my next post! Adding a dark value and using the dot in a new role lead to a cute and simple baby quilt, I am just sure of it! 

Fingers crossed…till Tuesday…