Purple Baby Heart Quilt - First 2018 Quilt Finish

This sweet quilt was not even on my list of quilty goals for the year, yet here it is. Two of my coworkers are expecting babies this Spring. One of them is having an early baby shower since a super big work deadline is approaching for her team and time for baby showers will become scarce. I don't know her that well so I asked some of her closer work buddies what she might like. Without skipping a beat, I learned that "she really likes purple". That is all I needed to know.

My purple stash is not large so I pulled all of them and sorted them into blue purples and red purples, then I asked my teen design expert which set I should use. He told me to go with the red purples as they were brighter and more fun for babies. Originally, this newsprint fabric was going to be the background but I changed my mind once I decided on a design.

As often happens, there was a quilt on Pinterest I liked. It was all half square triangles and four-patches so it would be easy to scale to a good baby quilt size. Each half square triangle finishes at four inches. There are 114 half square triangles in this quilt so there was lots of squaring up going on.

Once the squaring up job was complete, I played around with the layout for the heart. All those trimmings were loosely tied into two bundles and hung from trees in the backyard. The birds like them for nest building and they will certainly be weathered and soft by the time the birds are ready for them.

Here's the full layout of the quilt. The color placement is random and there was enough variety among the purples that hardly any rearranging was required.

This was so much fun to quilt. I think I say that about every quilt I make and it is so true. There is a cross hatch grid on the heart, straight lines to echo the purple rows, and swirls in all the white space.

I was even brave and used a lilac thread for the swirls. It shows just a little more than a matching thread would show. In fact, I ran out of the lilac thread and had to quilt the top and bottom triangles with cream thread. It is not noticeable in the finished quilt.

This quilt is made entirely from stash. The fabric for the front and back, the batting, the thread, and the binding are all stash. I was very excited about that.

I love the heart. It is a perfect welcome for a new baby.

The pieced backing was a surprise as I originally thought I had enough in one piece of fabric. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull it off, but I found the darker purple pieces on a late round of stash hunting.

For the first time this year, I am tracking my time in the sewing room. Sometimes, I think it is best not to know exactly how much time I am spending there or how long it takes to make a specific project, but decided it was worth the experiment for a year. So, here are the stats:

Start date: January 3, 2018
Finish date: January 15, 2018
Finished size: 40 inches x 48 inches
Time invested: 17 hours
Purchases to complete: None. All stash and all supplies were on hand.

The combination of the heart and the purple rows make me think of a heart beat, especially the ones that touch either side of the heart. I'm looking forward to gifting this quilt to a special purple loving mama.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.