A Fun Quilt for a New Baby

    I don't know if I have mentioned that there are many babies expected in our family right now. Among them are my daughter-in-law Korina, who is expecting her 5th, (a boy) at any time now.  She has c-sections though, so it will be scheduled unless something unexpected happens.  My daughter Alicia is due the end of March.  This is her first and she is also expecting a boy.
   Korina's mom does beautiful quilting and my grandchildren have beautiful quilts that she has made for them.  My mom quilts, she is turning 92 this year, so her quilting has slowed down a bit, but she is still at it.  Well, I decided that my daughter Alicia's baby shouldn't be deprived of a quilt from his grandmother, even if I am not as good at it as the above mentioned quilters, so I figured that a baby quilt was a good place to start.
    My mom recently gave me a quilt for the back of my couch to add color to my family room.  Here it is:

  Notice how she used colors and fabrics she knew I would love.

     I love the fabric on the back, too. The picture does not do it justice.  Also notice that the squares on the front are left unfinished and so when the raw edges get washed it becomes a soft frayed edge.  I like the way the squares are radomly placed on the top fabric and appliqued down.  I thought that this might be the type of quilt I could figure out and do without having to match points and piece.  So, a trip to Walmart's fabric department was called for.
     Walmart sells collections of fat quarters that are already coordinated for you.  The price is really great as well.  The cute flannel set I found was under $8.00.  My high school football player son Jacob was with me and he insisted we include a football print for his nephew.  (He wants to have a football team consisting of all of his nephews one day.)  I also threw in a few pieces from my own stash.  

Here are a few of them.  I used a yellow fabric as my top layer and cut out my squares into 5 inch squares with my zig-zag rotary cutter.  Then I laid them all out in what I felt was a pleasing design and pinned them into place.

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   This photo is actually after I stitched it all together.  I used a decorative stitch that I have on my new machine that I got this year.   I have finished sewing the top together and I have sandwiched in the batting to the backing.  It is all basted.  I have decided to machine quilt it, so that will be my last step that I will post in my next post.
    RED ALERT! I have to finish this quilt this week.  This morning I was in my classroom at work when I got a call from my son-in-law Adrian.  ALICIA'S WATER BROKE THIS MORNING!  She is only  32 and a half weeks, they are keeping her in the hospital and holding her off a little longer since she still has fluid and the baby needs more time, but she will definitely be delivering no later than a week and 3 days.  I will post the finished product soon! Hopefully a healthy, sweet baby will be wrapped in it!
Until then!