Bumble Bee Quilt for Baby Gigi

When I learned that a friend was expecting a baby, I hoped I'd be able to make a baby quilt as a gift.  She shared that the theme of the baby room would be Bumble Bees and gave me some color swatches, so I began planning.

I took much inspiration from a quilt shown on the Quilts of Love blog.  It has an Owl theme that I thought would adapt nicely to a Bumble Bee theme.  The Irish Chain pattern for the background was a nice backdrop for the themed pieces. 

Armed with color swatches for the baby's room, I set off to the fabric store to get started.  I'm always attracted to the batiks; this lovely green fabric wouldn't be ignored.

The Irish Chain assembly went fairly quickly.  I hadn't done applique in quite a while, so it was fun to get into that mind-set again.  I used brown paper to make the patterns, pinning them up on the background to get a sense for placement and balance.  I'm not a traditional applique person, so did the fuse and satin stitch method.

For the quilting, I'm always pleased to get more practice in on my free-motion skills. I started off by running diagonal stitches through the Irish Chains.  Next, I did echo quilting around the theme/applique pieces.  In the large white areas, I alternated between a sunflower, twin buzzing bees, and a bee trail/meandering stitch.

On the border, I alternated between four straight lines that lined up with the seams of the 9-patch blocks and diagonal lines that lined up with the diagonal lines in the Irish Chain (making an X in the border).

Here, below, you can see the sunflower quilting.

I took these pictures after I had washed and dried the quilt, so they don't show the quilting very well (and the lighting wasn't quite right).  Next time, I'll take pictures before I wash.  But, I love the crinkle of the quilt after it's been washed.