My Baby Quilt Plans

When I introduced you to my past baby quilt projects two weeks ago, I also mentioned that I have some baby quilts lined up for the next three to four months. Today I want to write about my baby quilt plans and what my special idea about them is.

When I found out that I was pregnant, I immediately thought about how my baby’s quilt should look like. Then bit by bit I found out that not only I would have a ‘Corona-baby’, but also one of my sisters, three of my cousins, and various dear friends. The list of babies to be born in the near future kept growing. 

And I started to make a plan for a special baby quilt for each one of them! Ten baby quilts for ten very special little girls and boys.. 🙂

Planning a Baby Quilt for Three Years

The fabrics for my little baby boy’s quilt have been part of my stash for almost three years now. I bought this fabric selection on my very first visit to a Hobby Lobby shop in West Lafayette, Indiana, in 2018. Only about a week after my civil wedding!

My husband and I got married in Washington D.C. in April 2018 in a Starbucks coffee shop. Nothing special about this! Getting married by an officiant in Washington D.C. seemed to be just the fastest and easiest way to tie the knot for an American boy and a German girl. And Starbucks was a suggestion of the officiant as it was conveniently situated just next to the courthouse where our marriage certificate was supposed to be filed. 

After getting married we spent a few days in Washington D.C. before visiting my husband’s childhood home West Lafayette. Little did he know that my very first visit to the Midwest would end in a crazy fabric shopping spree. I have no idea how many fabric shops I visited during this stay, but I returned back to Doha with an extra suitcase full of sewing supplies. 

And exactly this suitcase was the one that was checked by the US Transportation Security Administration. When I arrived to unpack my fabrics, I had a nice little note that my luggage was searched in my suitcase. I wonder what the officials were thinking when they saw that there was literally nothing but fabrics in this suitcase.

It’s a Boy!

When I bought this fabric range, I did not specifically think that they would become my baby’s quilt fabrics. But during the last few years, I kind of preserved them for a special project. Whenever I took them out from the fabric stash and looked at them, I decided that it was not time to cut them yet. They would be used for something special!

And when I found out that I was pregnant, I knew the time had come. The only issue with my fabric collection was that it consisted of various prints in salmon orange and light mint green. Colors were chosen for a girl rather than for a boy. 

And we were expecting a boy! 

I ended up taking out a few of the more girlish prints and added some navy blue neutrals. Thus the fabric selection would work also for my little boy’s baby quilt and some other items I have in mind for him. And there is enough fabric left in case he is going to have a little sister in the future! 🙂

Baby Quilts for Girls and Boys

But not only my baby would need a baby quilt. Also, the other nine babies being born around me would need a cozy little blanket to keep them warm or to play on. 

So, I went on planning baby quilts for my family and friends. 

After talking to each mama-to-be separately to inquire about the baby’s gender and choose a color scheme I started designing their very own baby quilt patterns. We have chosen the fabrics for all ten baby quilts already and it is only up to me now to actually make them.

My idea was that each baby would get a baby quilt designed for him or her. And my dream is that this leads to a book on baby quilts. A book with ten unique and very different baby quilt patterns named after very special babies. 

So, here I sit at my desk, being 7 months pregnant, planning and sewing baby quilts like a crazy woman… and enjoying every part of it! 

Planning a Baby Quilt

I usually start planning any quilt by doing a few sketches on paper. First I only experiment with ideas for basic blocks and how to layout them into a quilt.

Whenever I know in advance with which fabrics I want to work, however, I work differently. Especially when working with precuts or leftovers there are certain constraints that come with the amount of fabric you have. In this case, I recreate the fabric patterns in Illustrator and experiment with the layout in Illustrator directly.

This is how I started working on my 10 baby quilts. And I have already designed seven patterns out of them. Five quilt tops have been sewn already and for another one, I started cutting the material. 

What do you think about this idea? Do you think I am crazy? Maybe I am, but believe it or not, being crazy helps me stay sane at the moment as everything else around me is so uncertain and changes every second day… 🙂