When I first started working on the baby quilt this week, I didn't know what the gender of the baby-to-be but I knew the baby was going to a future Chicago Cubs fan. The Chicago Cubbies Baby Quilt is for the son of Mary, one of my closet peep, who I swear it was only yesterday he was sitting in the backseat of his mother's car slurping his ice cream and driving me nuts but that's what little boys do.
Knowing that he and his wife are big Chicago Cubs Fans and one day will be starting a family, I purchased these Chicago Cubs fabrics several years ago right after their wedding and these two pieces have been sitting in my stash waiting to be used. I mentioned in a previous post that I find it challenging when I make a quilt with only a few fabrics, and this one was no exception. Thankfully again, I had the right shade of red and the dot fabric, which is from my Crazy Mom's Good Neighbor stash and was the perfect shade and scale. Sad to say, the red dot print is almost depleted, there's no more to be bought, but I have enough to make another Cubbie Quilt for myself since I love this quilt.
I had the perfect pattern to showcase the fabrics, the the Jungle Crosswalk Baby Quilt which I just made earlier this year for the 30 Quilt Blocks in 30 Days Quilt Blog Hop. I made some modifications to this pattern as follows:
- only one focus print (3/4 yard) was used for the blocks (Yes Shannon, it does work)
- only two prints (one yard of each) were used for the checkerboard squares
- the blocks finished 8", so the focus print was cut 4-1/2" x 8-1/2" and the strips were cut 2-1/2", twenty-five blocks were sewn, thirteen of Type A and 12 of Type B and set with a five by five layout
- a 2" finished border was added after the top was made since I thought the quilt would look boring without it and once I found out the baby-to-be was a girl, I knew I could add more red dots to this quilt
- this quilt measures 44" square and I was able to use the WOF of the other Cub fabric since it was 60" wide.
Since I added the border to this quilt, I wasn't looking forward to having to bury all of the threads when I quilted each row/pass. While I was basting the quilt, I had the bright idea that I could still do edge-to-edge quilting since the border was only 2" and I like how it looks. As with the Jungle Crosswalk Baby Quilt, I just did simple quilting with diagonal crosshatch lines and stitch in the ditch around each block with red thread.
It's a good thing that I am a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan having grown up several miles from Wrigley Fields. Otherwise, this quilt which screams Chicago Cubs would not have been so fun to make, like the time I made a quilt with Chicago White Sox fabric for a gift. This is the last of the baby quilts needed to be made and I am now ready to work on the QALs, which I am so far behind, but only for a short time since we leave for another vacation next week. After that, I will be free for big time Summer Sewing. Yay!
