Shake & Bake Quilt

Note: The Shake & Bake quilt pattern is available in my shop.

After finishing my Halloween quilt, I jumped right into making a baby quilt for my neighbor using the same block — and I finally came up with a name for it! Or, rather, Jose came up with a name for it. This pattern is officially now called Shake & Bake! Because it’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s really quite satisfying.

(Also, this.)

My next door neighbor is having a boy next month. She also has an almost 4-year-old daughter and our three girls have been fast friends since we bought our house three years ago. They are the BEST neighbors and we are all very excited to meet baby brother! Blue and greens are my favorite colors and are of course ideal for a baby boy quilt, so I raided my stash to pull a fun assortment. Most of them are tonal prints, but there are also a couple solids and two fun animal prints — sheep and alligators! (But not together because that would be dangerous. Ha.)

For the quilting, I stitched a diagonal crosshatch of lines spaced 2″ apart using the same blue variegated thread I’d previously used on my L Is For… quilt. This is only the second time I’ve ever used variegated thread and I really liked the result! It adds another subtle element to the overall design, and the varying shades of blue stand out in a fun way on the backing too.

(Here’s a fun time lapse video of part of the basting process for this quilt.)

This quilt also features the neatest machine binding I’ve ever done. I’ve said that before, but I continue to improve with practice and totally gave myself a fist bump when I finished this one. (See my recent post about glue basting for insight into my machine binding technique.)

Also, Charlotte loves helping with my quilt photos right now and it’s my favorite.

The stats:

• Quilt measures 50″ square.
• Fabrics are miscellaneous blue and green fat quarters from my stash. The sheep are Cotton + Steel and the alligators are Michael Miller.
• Backing and binding are a solid blue Kona cotton. (Surf, I think?)
• Machine quilted with a walking foot using Aurifil 50 wt (#4655 Storm at Sea).