Alphabet Baby Quilt and extra ideas

I couldn't resist transforming Michael Miller's Italian Alphabet into this baby quilt:

The fabrics from this collection have been in my stash for a while now and it's one of my favourites. The style is very "vintage" and reminds me of the books my Italian Grandma, Nonna Clara, used to give me to play with when I was a child.

The striped border is a coordinating fabric that gives the quilt a modern twist and I like the effect. It makes the letters stand out, like a frame. The size of this quilt is 67 x 57 cm (26.38 x 22.44 inches), which I found was a really good size for using in a pram or wrapping round my baby for the first months. Of course it gets too small rather quickly (these babies grow so fast!!!) but then an alphabet quilt like this would look really good hanging up in a child's bedroom too, don't you think?

Along the edge of the  Italian Alphabet panel were these little pictures which I decided to use to make fabric magnets.

The house "casa" one in the top right hand corner has become this magnet:

Lucy loves magnets and this is a fun way for learning new words, moving them about on the fridge making up stories. As I had more than one Italian Alphabet (I told you I really like this collection!) why not make something different: a lavender sachet with the initial of the person you giving it to.

The winner of our 100th Blog Post Giveaway is Quilting Tangent! Congratulations, Pinocchio has found a new home! Bye bye!

A Lovely Year of Finishes - LoveLy Baby Quilt finished!

I have managed to finish my LoveLy Baby Quilt and I have to say thank you to "A Lovely Year of Finishes" for this. I'm sure I wouldn't have finished it for months if I hadn't had this "deadline". Just in time for the April Finishes Party!

 As I posted half way through the month for the Mid-month Check-in, I had a few problems to solve. The tags I'd added were sticking too far out. I unstitched them, moved them further in and now I like how they look. I unstitiched the heart I'd quilted on one of the solid pink squares and tried again. The hearts are still a bit wobbly but it's handmade, right?

To be honest I still have to iron it, again. I would also like to add Eline Pellinkhof's crochet heart near the middle, but the quilt is finished and I'm happy with how it turned out. I am very very satisfied at having finished my LoveLy Baby Quilt!

More of A Lovely Year of Finishes and LoveLy Baby Quilt

As I posted at the beginning of the month, I have joined "A Lovely Year of Finishes" hosted by Melissa of Sew BitterSweet Designs and Shanna of Fiber of All Sorts, hoping to finish my LoveLy Baby Quilt. I'm not doing so well at the moment:

So far I have ironed everything (this is already an extremely difficult task...I always have time problems and have to keep the iron far away from my Toddler!) then, using my "Quick Results" method, I've sewn front and backing together, with the wadding on top of the front piece, right sides facing, leaving an opening for turning the quilt the right side out. During this process I sandwiched three ribbon tags, from my ribbon and trim stash, on one side. I found a really pretty heart ribbon that matches perfectly.

Problem number one: I sewed the ribbons and trim to far out, the tags are too long and I don't like them like that. So I am now unstitching them. I just have to sew them in again but it's a bit fidgety getting them straight and not making them move while you're sewing. Sigh...

Problem number two: I decided quite quickly how I was going to quilt the LoveLy Baby Quilt. As the fabric already has a lot of small patterns, I just want to quilt "in the ditch" around the wide border, right to the edge to make the corner squares stand out. I also want to quilt hearts on the four central solid pink squares. Here is where I had my second problem: I wobbled a bit, so I'm undoing that too because it keeps catching my eye!

Problem number three: when I finished piecing everything I noticed there was a tiny cut in the corner of one of the central solid pink squares. So I thought: I am not going to undo it all again to fix it! This is the solution I came up with:

I'm going to crochet two or three hearts to sew on to this area of the quilt, as an extra girlie touch too! They are so cute. I saw them in Eline Pellinkhof's beautiful book "Stitch and Sew Home" and fell in love with them (and practically everything else in the book!). I really like Eline's giant cross stitch murals, they're brilliant. She is also designing some really interesting fabric, I'll write about that soon...

The problem is I've only just started learning how to crochet from my friend Cinzia (Angelina) who is patiently trying to teach me! I've only done flowers so far and I have to translate the terms into Italian otherwise we don't know what we're talking about!

Problem number four: I've been carrying the quilt around, hoping to have time to do the unstitching, so it needs ironing again! Double sigh! 

Do these things just happen to me or is there somebody else out there who has the same problems? Will post again at the end of the month about this quilt, hopefully with good news!!!

A Lovely Year of Finishes and LoveLy Baby Quilt

I have decided to join "A Lovely Year of Finishes" hosted by Melissa of Sew BitterSweet Designs and Shanna of Fiber of All Sorts because it's about time I finish this Baby Quilt:

I've decided to call it LoveLy Baby Quilt because:

• it's full of hearts, in all shapes and sizes
• the challenge is called "A Lovely Year of Finishes"
• most importantly because my Baby is called Lucy and so LoveLy is short for Love Lucy!!!

As you can see from the photo, it's not even ironed at the moment! The reason is that I had to wash it because I didn't like how I had started quilting it (Ella didn't like it either!) so I decided to start all over again and to do this I had to wash it or you could see all the holes left by the stitches I undid (very long and boring job). I started making the quilt last year for a quilting course. I started quilting it during the course while holding Lucy on my lap as she had come to have some milk. It was quilted in straight lines through the middle of each square, horizontally and vertically. Half way through I realised I didn't like it quilted this way and that it also ruined my central square, my favourite one. The fabric in the central square shows my favourite childhood sweets, which are impossible to find in Italy: you know, Love Heart sweets.

All the fabric, a part from the solid pink, comes from "Sweetheart - Valentine Bundle" I bought from Fabric Rehab. They have some fantastic bundles, I often go and check what's new. They're original and good value.

Next post about LoveLy Baby Quilt after the 15th of April, hopefully with some progress!!!