Four Quilts by the Young Women

My daughter's Young Women church group had 3 pregnant leaders last year. 

One was pregnant with twins. 

So I was excited to help them learn to quilt. Groups of 2 or 3 girls each made a quilt for one of the leaders. 

Baby boy quilt by Emily and Sydney. The patterned fabric is a bunch of cars.

Anna, Morgan and Lindsay made this cowboy/country themed Rail Fence quilt for the little boy twin.

McKinna, Olivia and Emilie made this rail fence design for the girl twin.

Megan and Emma made this cute blue/green quilt for a baby boy (who happened to be Emma's nephew).

The girls did everything from picking out the fabric, to piecing and quilting. Because time was getting away from us and those babies refused to wait until we finished, I ended up doing most of the binding and some quilting on a few. But I think everyone learned a lot and had fun. 

Heidi's cousin gets a matching quilt -Chevron Style

With all the extra pieced diagonal stripes from Heidi's quilt, I made a matchy one for her cousin who was due less than a month after her. 

This time I laid them out Chevron Style. 

I had a fewer number of strips for this quilt so it got a border too.

And I sort of ran out of the backing fabric so I had to make due with what I had left over.

 (Same with the binding.)

Here they are together. 

Baby Girl Cousin Quilts

Herringbone Quilt for Heidi

This quilt was a little more difficult than I anticipated. My brain thought...

I can just make a bunch of strips (long vertical columns) of these diagonal stripes. 

See this tutorial for HOW TO on TheSewingChick.com

(You stagger the long strips of material and sew them together and then cut them into long rows.)

 

But I just thought you could do this the one way and just flip the strip upside down and it would automatically be going the other direction. Uh...No. The are all still going the same directions. DUH! I had to do a whole other set of strips staggered the other direction. So...I ended up with way more pieced strips than I needed. 

You'll see the twin quilt I made for this baby's cousin in another post.

 Sewing the strips together was ALSO harder than I expected. They stretched like crazy (because everything is cut on the bias which really makes the cotton fabric stretchy.) I ended up with really bumpy, distorted pieces. So I picked the first row apart and ended up pinning the vertical rows (columns?) all the way down and being really careful not to stretch them.

It was still a bit of a bumpy mess,

but after ironing and then quilting the whole project and washing it...

It turned out really cute.

Charming?

I love the wrinkled look which reminds me of antique quilts and hand quilting.

This was a gift for my friend, Breanne, and her baby girl, Heidi.