Completed March 1, 2006 |
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| This quilt was made for Annabelle Grace, the first born of Carlin's good friend, Patrick. He and his wife, Jenny, had chosen to decorate Annabelle's nursery with a sock monkey theme. I wanted to make a quilt that would coordinate with her room, but it was 900 miles away (this is the first quilt I have made since moving to Florida). The goal was for the gift to be a surprise when we returned to Illinois for a visit. There are a couple different sock monkey fabric lines out there, as well as a prepackaged nursery set. So I requested pictures of her nursery, hoping they wouldn't get too suspicious. |
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As soon as I saw her walls were painted in yellow and white stripes, I remembered this quilt that I had found while googling "Baby Quilts": |
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I decided to replace the blue with red, and then I was off to find fabrics. The sock monkey fabric line that Jenny used to make the bedding and valance has been discontinued, so I could no longer find it in stores, and didn't have time to win some through an ebay auction. However, after a bit of internet sluething (Thank God for Google Images!) I was able to figure out that the curtains were made from the Moda Marble Multi-colored Dots line, still in production. Thankfully, a quilt shop in Thomasville, GA (only 30 miles away) happened to carry the line, so I was able to purchase the exact fabric! I also got the yellow marble fabric there. For the rest of the fabric I picked up a pre-packaged bundle of red fat-eighths at Jo-Anns. Using six red fabrics in the nine-patches gave a nice scrappy look. I wish I could say that the fabric buying process was as simple as that, but Annaliese (then 22 months old) and I spent several days exploring different locations for the perfect fabrics. Thankfully Annaliese enjoyed the process. She got excited when I told her we were going shopping for Annabelle's baby quilt. As we walked past bolts and bolts of fabric, she said repeatedly, "Look! Fagric for Baby Belle!" Hence the quilt's name is "Baby Belle". The quilting on this project was very simple. I quilted the major gridlines, extending them to the border. Then I sewed down the red diagonals of the nine patches and outlined the yellow stripe. To add a personal touch, I quilted a capital A in the center block. |
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Thankfully I had the honor of giving the quilt to the Lees in person and the opportunity to meet sweet Annabelle.
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