Quick(er) Baby Quilts with Spoonflower

We are having a real baby boom in my “work family”! I started a tradition of making quilts for the new babies on our team, and there are a lot! I’ll share some of the past designs at the end of this post. It’s important to me to make each quilt contain something personal for the recipient, when I am choosing the design and fabrics to include. If you’re looking for very specific patterns, Spoonflower is an amazing resource, with almost infinite designs by independent artists. I’ve incorporated custom fabrics in many of my previous quilts, and this time, I decided to use their “Fill-a-Yard” function to create what is sometimes called a “cheater quilt.” I know that these quilts skip the very big steps of cutting and piecing, but “cheater” sounds so negative! I’d like to rename them “Quick Quilts”… or, maybe they should be called “Quick(er) Quilts,” 😉 because there’s still a lot of work that goes into this project.

Spoonflower and other sources have many pre-designed Quick Quilts. I wanted to choose fabrics that were personalized for Laurel’s family, so I designed my own.

Here’s how you do it:

Search Spoonflower for your favorite designs and add them to a Collection
When viewing the Collection, click on “Start Designing” and then “Fill-a-Yard”
There are multiple layouts available for “Fill-a-Yard.” I chose the 1-yard layout that includes 42 squares in the Petal Signature Cotton
If you want to make a typical-sized baby quilt, one yard (36″x42″) will be enough. I like to make my baby quilts more of a throw blanket size, approximately 40″x50″, so they can be more versatile. To make the bigger quilt, you could add a border, or you could do what I did – I created two separate “Fill-a-Yards,” pictured below. I duplicated the bottom row of the first yard at the top of the second yard, because I wasn’t sure how much fabric would be available to join the pieces. It turns out there’s about a half inch border on the edge of the fabric, so you could likely get away without the duplicated row, if you want to chance it. By adding three rows from the second yard to the first, the finished size is 42″x54″. I used the bottom of the second yard to print a fabric I wanted to try for other projects.

Once I had the fabric, I prewashed the pieces and joined the them to make the quilt top. I then layered it with batting and backing and pin-basted the layers together. I chose simple “in the ditch” and diagonal line quilting patterns and then finished it off with a hand-stitched binding.

Here are some photos of the finished quilt!

I have been pairing my quilts with these board books by my friend, Christie Matheson. I love how charming and interactive they are!

I wasn’t able to make it to the baby shower, but the hostess texted me these photos and updates – I am so glad that I was to create something that felt “perfect.”