Jose’s best friend Seth and his wife Rachel had their first baby earlier this year, and shortly into my 100 day project Jose requested that I make a baby quilt for their new son! I had such a long list going already that it took me a while to get to it, but as my 100 day project was ending I finally got started on this quick and easy make.
Several years ago I took a photo of some carpet — or maybe it was a rug? — that had a simple, two-color design. I mocked it up in Illustrator (and have since lost the original photo) and ever since then, I’ve wanted to make a quilt that mimics this elongated, broken chevron design.
But every time I visited my “quilt inspiration” file, I skipped past this one. I didn’t want to deal with half rectangle triangles — they’re like the fussy, complicated cousin of the friendly half square triangle. They’re harder to make accurately, and you have to pay attention to which way the diagonal goes. The design from the photo always felt simultaneously too simple and too complex.
But for a baby quilt, a simple design is what I wanted. And it finally occurred to me that I could make something very similar to my inspiration image — and make the construction process a whole lot simpler — but just using squares instead of rectangles.
So…I did just that.
I suppose I could call this an original design by me, inspired by a photo of carpet. But I’m not sure how much putting together basic half square triangles really counts as “original” anymore. Either way, I love how quickly this little quilt came together and I also love how graphic it looks in the two basic colors of dark blue and white/gray. I haven’t messed around with different color schemes, but I suspect that choosing 2 primary colors and sticking close to those is essential for the parts of the design I wanted to highlight.
As my quilting has progressed over the years, my attitude toward baby quilts has shifted a bit and part of the fun for me now is trying to choose quilt designs and fabrics that feel playful, but don’t necessarily scream “BABY!” with the hopes of making a quilt that will be useful and loved even when the baby days are past.
At 40″ square, this quilt is definitely baby in size, but the other baby things are more subtle. It’s blue for a boy, but not baby blue. There are bunnies, but they’re not overly cute. There are frogs, but just the eyes. There are stars and airplanes — a nod to both Jose and I as the gifter and to Seth who also studied aerospace engineering — but they’re not kiddie versions.
The stats:
- Quilt measures 40″ square.
- Neutral fabrics are from two 5″ charm squares packs of More Paper by Zen Chic for Moda purchased from my friend Ani at Sparkly Elephant.) I used the whites and light grays, and left out the dark grays.
- Blue fabrics are a mix of stuff from my stash — some Michael Miller Luxe, old Cotton+Steel basic, Me+You batiks, and more. The bunnies are from a bundle of Japanese fabric that I picked up at Quilt Market 2017.
- Binding is scrappy, made from the same blues in the quilt top.
- Backing is Carolyn Friedlander. (Widescreen is an all-time fave for me when I need backing or any print-that-reads-as-a-solid.)
- Machine quilted straight lines with a walking foot and Aurifil 50 wt white thread.
I made this quilt from start to finish in about a week, and it was such fun to have one that came together so quickly. I love how it turned out and hope baby and parents do too!
