One Monthly Goal: April

Hi Quilting Friends,

My “One Monthly Goal” for April was to finish the “Winnie the Pooh” quilt for Nick and Caroline’s baby, who is due to arrive in early June. Ta-done!

We don’t know yet if Baby is a boy, a girl, or a tiger, so I used gender neutral colors.  The panel and yardage are from the Riley Blake “Winnie the Pooh” collection, chosen to coordinate with the theme for their nursery. I 💙 Pooh and the gang from the Hundred Acre Woods!

I’m not a panel user, at all. In fact, this was my first time using a panel to make a quilt! I needed to be finished quickly, and the panel is SEW adorable that I just couldn’t say “No thanks.” I purchased the panel, 0.25 yard pieces of coordinating Pooh prints, as well as fabrics for the binding and backing. I added two more pieces of fabric from my stash that looked as if they were meant to be part of the collection.

My first step was to measure each individual section of the panel, and then play around with grid paper to help me decide how to put the pieces together. I left several open areas between the panel sections, which are now filled with some piecing. I cut the panel apart and trimmed the sections to the exact sizes that I needed. It made me a bit nervous, so I measured twice before making each cut. All went well!

I created several pieced sections to set between the panel areas. “Friendship Stars” with the green Pooh & friends print and the yellow dot represent the friendship between my son Nathan and Nick, now 35, which dates back to their kindergarten days. As you see, I stitched inside the star, and then echoed the lines in the background to help those fun stars pop out.

The other pieced sections are simple checkerboards made with the blue bees & hunny print and yellow dot. The checkerboards are quilted with a simple point-to-point diamond design.

The backing is another adorable Pooh print, in green, with yellow plaid binding. I used 80/20 batting to ensure that the quilt is lightweight and snuggly, and a pale honey-colored thread for the quilting. Most of the quilting is done with a loopy meander, which reminds me of the cute bees in the fabric prints.

The baby shower is coming up on May 2, so I will take a photo of Caroline with the quilt after she opens her gift. I promise to share a picture later on. Here’s one more shot of the finished quilt, because it’s SEW adorable and I hope that it makes you smile too!

Happy quilting,

Sharon

P.S. And in other news: Winner Winner, chicken dinner! Actually, it isn’t a chicken dinner (although that’s great too). I’ve won two crib-sized Quilter’s Dream batting packages. The white batting is 100% cotton, and the black batting is mid-weight polyester.

I’m looking forward to trying them out in a couple of upcoming projects (to be determined at a later date). Thank you, Quilter’s Dream!

Note to Self: Remember to link up to the April finish post!