Elin's Quilt

Since making the quilt for Jamie and Karl, I have learned a few things. One is that I really like to quilt, so I will use any excuse I have to make another quilt. I learned just over 9 months ago that one of my favorite cousins Aaron and his wife Kristin were going to have another baby, so naturally I had to make a quilt for this little bundle of joy.

As a child I always looked forward to going to big family events because I knew Aaron would be there, and although I had no idea what we would end up doing, I knew it would be fun. Aaron is actually my father's cousin, he is the youngest grandchild and I am the oldest great-grandchild, I think there is like a 5 year age difference. Anyway I spent many fun times being harassed by Aaron, being locked outside in the cold Minnesota winter, and one memorable evening he hooked up sleds behind my grandfather's four wheeler and spent quite a few hours pulling us along behind him trying to make us fly off the sleds. Naturally, I have to repay this kindness by making a quilt for his newest family addition.

I had a bunch of old receiving blankets that I had picked up from a garage sale a few years ago with the idea that cut up, they would make the most amazing baby quilts. So I got out my stash and went to work. When I started working on the quilt, they still did not know the sex of the baby so I tried to find something that would be somewhat gender neutral. Sadly my stash of baby blankets did not like this idea, most of the baby blankets I had were varying shades of blue. However, I did have one blanket in this blue stash that had both blue and pink balloons, and I came up with an idea. I would use all of these blue blankets to make a quilt with a lovely flannel front, but I would bind the quilt with pink, use pink thread and once the baby was born, embroider their name on it in pink. So I set about cutting and sewing together my fabric...

I liked the quilt so far, but many people thought it was a bit boring (it hung on my living room wall for many months while I waited for the baby to be born). I explained to everyone that I was waiting for the baby to be born so that I could put her name on the quilt. Fast forward a few months to March. I had a very busy month as I had a trip out of town for work, about 160 hours of work in 10 days, and I had to find a new place to live, pack and move into that place. Of course baby Elin arrived smack dab in the middle of my crazy work week on March 17, 2012. Needless to say, although I now knew her name and wanted to get the quilt to her as soon as possible, I just didn't have the time to work on it yet. So it waited another 2 weeks or so before I was able to quickly finish it about a week ago.

Here is the quilt for baby Elin, I hope she loves it!! The backing on this quilt was given to me by my grandmother from a stash of long forgotten fabric that she had laying around and the flannel squares were all from receiving blankets that were ready to be loved by another child. I also successfully appliqued on her name to the front of the blanket. I wish I would have done something like this with Jamie and Karl's quilt as it was much easier than what I did for their quilt.

I put my tag on the back of the quilt and used some yarn from my great-grandmothers (Aaron's Grandmother) stash to add a bit of a girlie twist. Now Elin can have a little piece of her Great-Grandmother who was an amazing crafter. I am just happy that I have bits of her stuff that I can include in quilts for the great-grandchildren who will never get to meet her.

Because I am a nerd and like the idea of pretending like this quilt was purchased from some sort of business for them, I typed up a care card to include when I sent the quilt. If I ever get enough stuff made to open an etsy shop or if I feel like selling my stuff in town I can use this template which I rather like :)

Hehe I know I am a nerd but it was fun to create a fake business for her quilt. Maybe one day I can get around to making it a real business, but for now it's fun to pretend...