Giraffe Baby Quilt and Tutorial

This project was not one on my list. It is the giraffe's fault. Does that happen to you sometimes? I just happened upon this adorable giraffe print in the clearance bin at my local quilt shop a while back and had to have it.

I have a thing for giraffe's anyway and decided it would be fun to make a baby quilt with this fabric. It needed to be fast and fun. This quilt top only needs six fat quarters for the blocks (I used two fat quarters of the giraffe print plus four others), one fat quarter for the setting squares, and a yard of fabric for the sashing.

First, cut four 7 1/2" squares from each of the six fat quarters. You will have 24 squares total.

Sort the squares into pairs, making twelve pairs. I tried to maintain good contrast with each pair. Take each pair and place them right sides together.

Stitch a quarter inch seam on each vertical side of the blocks. Next, cut each block in half. The center of the block will be 3 3/4" from the side.

I could have just pressed these open and moved on but the blocks would be rectangles rather than squares and I wanted square blocks for this project. Rotate your block 90 degrees.

Trim 1/2" from one side. Press your blocks open.

Each block should measure 7" square. Repeat this with each pair of blocks. This goes really fast. Once your blocks are made, lay them out in six rows with four blocks each.

The blocks can all face the same way or be rotated or whatever looks best to you. I intended to have mine facing all sorts of directions but it got too busy and my giraffes were happiest when they were all playing close together.

From the remaining fat quarter, cut 35 2 1/2" squares for your setting squares. From the remaining yard of fabric, cut 58 2 1/2" x 7" rectangles for your sashing. All that is left to do is sew your blocks and rows together. Easy peasy.

This really is an easy project to make but I have to confess that it took me a little longer to get there. The blocks were a piece of cake. They came together in under two hours. Then I got a little over confident and decided to just throw a white sashing between the blocks and call it done.

Super duper fast. But I didn't like it. All that fun fabric and I thought the end result was sort of plain. It was all blue and yellow and white and totally ignored that awesome green color in the giraffe print. So I threw some green on top of it and knew I had to fix it. I painstakingly unstitched enough to add setting squares in the body of the quilt. Here's the first one.

Here's how it looked when I finished that step.

That was definitely better to my eye, but still incomplete. I took those outer borders off and added setting squares there, too.

Now it is complete. And adorable. With just the right amount of blue, yellow, AND green. The lesson learned here is to always play around with the layout and colors as much as possible before jumping into a quick project. There will still be times when changes are needed but I am certain I would have saved myself a little bit of unsewing if I had taken the time to really look and think before starting.

I have a nice yellow back and bright blue/teal binding all ready to go.

The quilting will have to wait a bit though. I'm out of 505 basting spray. Guess that means I'll be heading to the local quilt shop soon to restock. I can't wait to see what is in the clearance bin this time!