springy baby irish chain

I've talked about my partner in baby quilt crime before - we live in a baby prolific area and have teamed up on many projects over the last couple of years. And most recently we have churned out about 4 baby quilt in almost as many weeks!! It's been a little crazy. Brynn is normally the piecer with myself doing the quilting and we've swapped around who does the binding.  But we've been able to work together to give a gift that both of our hands have made.  And I really love that.

Admittedly, Brynn has a pretty amazing hefty stash that we've worked from.  Plus she's great at quilt math and is a very precise piecer.  I've gotten comfortable in my role as the quilter and actually really enjoy free motion quilting these smaller quilts.

However, on this particular quilt I had all of these fun scraps leftover from my scrappy trip around the world quilt.  And I wanted to contribute materials too so I offered to piece the top. I really love an Irish Chain and after watching this awesome tutorial, from the Missouri Quilt Co, was super inspired to get it going!

So I started with my scraps and some trusty Kona Snow and made up some nine-patches.  Side note: I love chain piecing.  Side note 2: all photos here taken on my iPhone 5 and don't look as good blown up.  Please forgive me.

I started to get really excited as I started laying out the nine patches with the solid blocks.

And even more excited when I got it all put together and thought about backing it with the aqua chevron and binding it with the red dots!

I then packaged it up and sent it to Brynn for quilting and binding and a good washing.  Side note 3: the sun was really bright at the shower.

And here's a quick detail of the quilting and binding.  Brynn is also super proficient in her binding skills, they always look so nice and crisp.  Side note 4: in a house with poor night lighting and phone camera photos sometimes Kona white gets mixed in with the snow and you don't notice until you get it in some real daylight *smacks head*.

I do love the way this quilt turned out. The colors seemed really cheery to me and perfect for our friend who is having her 3rd baby and 3rd girl.  Aqua is the new pink.  Did you know?

I have several more baby quilts to share.  How about we have a baby quilt exclusive sew & tell soon?

travelling baby quilt

I don't know if you remember back when Babylouwho was born, but several of my awesome blogging friends collaborated on a little quilt for her.  You can read about it here.

One of those sweet friends had a baby this year and we reprised our roles except this time I got to help in the making and Natalia got the quilt!!

I received a partially pieced top with fabric to add the rest including borders.

These are the blocks I added.

And here's what the top looked like completed.  I thought it was pretty cute, but after Rita worked her magic, it's even cuter!

Once again, Candy hand dyed some fun fabrics and we used a (scaled down) pattern from Amy's book.  Amy E. and I pieced the top, Rita appliqued his name on and Vicki quilted and bound it!

It was so fun to see the evolution of the quilt as the others shared their progress.

Amy was able to hand deliver to Natalia last week so we finally get to share our parts in the process!

I don't have pictures of the finished quilt, but if you visit the links below, you can see it's progress and final destination!!

I love making handmade gifts for new moms.  And I love working on them with friends.  The collaboration is almost as fun as reaching the finished product!  Plus then I don't have the pressure of finishing something from start to finish! I need to work on that.

The links below will take you right to the post about this quilt:
Candy - Candied Fabrics
Amy E. - Amy's Creative Side
Rita - Mochi Studios
Vicki - Sew Inspired
Natalia - Piece N Quilt