Baby Quilts for Jaxson

 A quilt for little Jaxson from me

My cousin Catherine (Cat) and her husband Justin had their first baby in July and of course I wanted to make him a quilt.   His name is Jaxson but they call him Jax.  Cat had a couple of baby showers in June and received 15 homemade quilts, blankets, and afghans for Jaxson!  What a blessed baby and parents.  The number of homemade gifts speaks volumes of how loved Cat and Justin are and how excited their family is for them to welcome their first child.



I gave Cat the baby quilts I made her at one of her showers, however when I went to visit last week she sent one back!  No, not because it was defective ;- ) but because she wants to hang it in Jax’s room and wanted me to add a hanging sleeve.  She also gave me one that Justin’s 81 year old grandmother made to add a sleeve to as well. 





I made Jaxson’s quilt with Oink-a-doodle moo fabric. I started with a pattern from Moda Bake Shop http://www.modabakeshop.com/2013/04/oink-a-doodle-moo-x-times-two-or-three.html and modified slightly.  Cat has a cow theme in his room and a black crib so I decided to do a farm theme quilt.  I started with a panel that I cut into squares and then pieced bear paws to make alternating blocks.  I made a nine patch block for the center with his name in it.   I used the extra animal squares for the back.



I quilted the background of the animal blocks densely in the sky to make the clouds pop.  I quilted squiggly swirls around the pigs.



I put diamonds in the borders and grid quilted the bear paw blocks. 


 Luckily I saved the leftover fabric and had enough to make the sleeve to match.   I made a tutorial of how to add the sleeve, check under my Pages at top or use this link http://www.sewingwithrascal.com/p/quilt-sleeve-tutorial.html

Another baby quilt for Jaxson from his Great-grandmother
Justin’s 81 year old grandmother Virginia Fields made this darling bear quilt for baby Jaxson.



She hand quilted the whole quilt.  See how she outlined the bears.  How cute!



She appliqued the bears on with a real unique stitch.  It looks like a very close buttonhole stitch with a thick white thread (or maybe a very thin yarn)  It looks like it would hold up very well in the wash.  She also added little eyes, nose and mouth on all the bears.  I like the straight mouth, gives the bear an amused look.   She knows you don’t put button eyes on a quilt for a baby.  The quilt is also very soft, has a very nice feel to it, perfect for a baby.



She basted the quilt with very loose long stitches to hold the quilt layers in place while she was quilting.  How do I know that?  Because I found one strand of thread remaining that didn’t get removed.  She quilted little grid squares all very neatly. I could see a very faint pencil mark in a place or two that tells me she marked the quilt grid with pencil as a guide.  This is exactly the way my grandmother Queen basted and marked quilts.  I think women of their age were taught that way and stuck with tried and true.  There have since been the invention of all sort of disappearing ink markers made for quilts so that you can mark lines and then wash or iron the marks away.  Who knows if they will remain erased in 50 years…


Close-up of her very tight, neat hand quilting. 


Close-up of the applique stitches:


It’s even more impressive when Cat told me that she doesn’t quilt very often.   I finished the hanging sleeve.  I enjoyed being a small part of the hand sewing on this special quilt.  
Here is a picture of it hanging from it’s new sleeve.  I made a tutorial on how to add a sleeve while adding it to this quilt.  You can see the link to the tutorial at the top of the blog or click this link: http://www.sewingwithrascal.com/p/quilt-sleeve-tutorial.html

 

Maybe I can talk Cat into letting me photograph some of Jaxson’s other quilts.