Baby Love!

Tonight, while watching my Gators win against BYU in the NCAA tournament (Go Gators!), I finished up the first block of Ginger's "Baby Love" Affairs of the Heart quilt. This is actually a different block than the one I posted earlier, although I used the same fabrics because I liked my color choices. The one I posted a few days ago used fusible web to attach the pieces. I ended up using that as a practice block to try some different satin stitch techniques, but I didn't really like any of them. I was very concerned about fraying since this is for a child though, so I redid the block with a different technique. I made plastic templates and used heavy starch to turn the edges of my applique pieces under. Then, I used clear monofilament and a narrow zig zag stitch to attach the pieces to the background. The blocks will be 12 inches, so I've enlarged the pattern to 175%.

The most time consuming part was the embroidery - it took forever! There is an awful lot of it on a 12" block. I did get faster by the end of the block though. The embroidery brought back wonderful memories of my Grammy teaching me to embroider when I was little - and all the cute mushroom garden pillows that we made together (hey - it was the '70s - and all the appliances were avocado - it was all very stylish!).

Baby Love - Block #9

A close up of some of the embroidery.

Because I'm a dork and I think it is kind of interesting - here is the back...

I'm really happy with how this block turned out.  If I can keep it up, this will be a lovely quilt.  

The official schedule for the group that is working through the book online doesn't start until June, but since we are moving in June I want to get a few blocks done now so that I don't fall behind before we start.   I may try to do 2 or 3 more in April.