Project 30 Finished the baby quilt

The baby quilt is finished and ready to be given to the newborn baby's parents. Halfway the quilt was wondering if the baby built would be baby-ish enough, and it is. The quilt is a lovely combination of bright happy colours. The border is done with one of the yellow African fabrics that has quite some of the other colours used. I choose this colour as the baby is a boy. Would the baby have been a girl, I would have use some purple for the border.

At the same time I managed to reach my aim of finishing the quilt as part of the OMG July challenge that Patty at Elm Street Quilts is hosting. It does help to set a public goal!!

Making the border of the baby quilt OMG July

Quilting is addictive. I have had a weakness for fabrics ever since ... well ever since I learned how to use a sewing machine. I used to go the "lapjes markt" (fabrics market) in the Netherlands when I was a student to buy fabrics to make my own clothes. And then when living abroad would buy fabrics everywhere. I made some nice silk jackets from Chinese silk bought at the market in Rawalpindi when living in Pakistan. And I bought some lovely hand woven fabric made by Guatemalan refugees living in refugee camps in Southern Mexico. I still have the jacket I made, it is too big, however I can not throw it away. And for work I traveled to several African countries and bought loads of African batiks. And of course I bought kilos and kilos of batiks in Indonesia. A good thing I stopped traveling because I have so much now.

And then I discovered quilting. I had made one years ago, I had a picture from a magazine and Laura Ashley fabrics my mum had given me when I was a teenager. A little plastic bag with 5" squares. It was a good learning experience and I thought this is it. I have made one, it asks too much precision, not for me.

A friend of mine had given me 6 yards of African fabric a few years ago. I made a curtain, and a lamp for the boys' room and there was still so much left. So I made a quilt, all squares and it looked great until I tried to actually back it and quilt it all together, it looked wobbly on the back side.

Still not giving up, I came across the QAL from the FQS "Cross Roads" and I made it using fabric from my African stash. It looked much better. Still wobbly on the backside after quilting but improvement.

And early June I discovered the site Elm Street Quilts - and they have monthly challenges. This is all I needed. I had started this cute baby blanket again using my African stash and signed up for One Monthly goal. July has started and OMG July is open.

My goal for OMG July is to make the border and finish the baby blanket. The baby is born (a boy) and am traveling end July to bring the blanket.