hedgehog baby quilt

When our friends told us they were expecting their first child, I knew we wanted to do something a little more special than the usual shower gift. I'd always wanted to try making a quilt, and a baby one was just the right size to try. If it was baby-sized, after all, how scary could it be?

My husband and I went downtown to the fabulous Michael Levine store to pick out fabric, and we spent a good hour looking over the many choices. Our friends are artistic and retro and cool, so anything too babyish or saccharine pink wasn't going to swing it.

We were excited to find a darling woodland print in Robert Kaufman's Hedgehog Meadow--bright and cheerful and just sweet enough without being too cutesy. We also liked Hoffman Fabric's snuggly flannel stripe, as well as Michael Miller Meadowsweet for the other patch. I also fell crazy in love with the aqua and brown woodgrain print from Joel Dewberry, which made for fantastic bias tape. (Incidentally, I'd forgotten the name for Meadowsweet when I was writing this up, and couldn't find it even after searching pages and pages of images online. But as soon as I used this online Etsy fabric color sorter I previously blogged about, it came up instantaneously! Highly recommended.)

I consulted lots of books and online tutorials while I was doing this project, but in the end I mostly just compiled the knowledge and figured out how to do the quilt by trial and error. I'd hate for it to be examined too closely (ah, the joys of learning how to deal with bunchy fabric and a walker foot!), but in the end I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

The baby's name will be Abigail Byrd, so of course the finishing touch had to be a pretty blanket-stitched "A" applique monogram with a bird perched on top. All ready and waiting to cuddle the little miss when she finally arrives.