Baby Quilt

In my quilting adventures, I have learned to call everything I make “practice!” It takes off the pressure for perfection and paves the way to my creative juices flowing.

(Working on the layout of the design.)

Free Motion Quilting a vine motif.

I am grateful for the fabric my friend Debbi shared with me.  It included two charm packs (5″ squares of pre-cut fabric in a flattering color scheme). It looked like great practice!  Because of the pink and blue colors, it just spoke baby quilt.  It was crazy that three of the Black Sheep were having grandchildren due at about the exact same time.  (Black Sheep is the name for my husband’s high school buddies…their intramural basketball team was called the Black Sheep, and it stuck.) So as Debbi and I put our heads together, it made sense that it should be for Brian and Robyn’s daughter Sarah’s baby girl, as Robyn and I had been visiting Debbi together since Debbi’s diagnosis. It would be from Debbi and me.  (Debbi, Robyn, and I are married to some of the Black Sheep and have been friends for over 35 years.)

(Finished!)

I found a neat way to use charm packs on one of my favorite sewing shows, “Sewing with Nancy,” on PBS.  Mary DeGroot was a guest on her show “Precut Fabrics for Speedy Projects (Part 1 of 3).” She showed this pattern at about halfway through the video (14:28). The diagonal stripes also gave me a place to “write” (quilt) the lyrics to the song “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”

(Baa Baa Black Sheep…)

I found some little sheep on a few of the squares, so I had to find a way to make them black (it may have been some ink), of course. (You may find them in the pictures.  It is where it looks like there is some dirt on the quilt!)

(I doubt you can read it all, but the gray diamond has FMQ in cursive, reading “Black Sheep, Black Sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, 3 bags full!”)

I enjoyed searching Pinterest for FMQ (Free Motion Quilting) designs.  In the last few years, I’ve become more interested in doing FMQ.  I learned, as with many things, that the only way to get good is practice, practice, practice!  (Hence, my desire to call everything I make “practice.”) As we all learned in grade school to write in cursive, it started looking crude, but it eventually became smooth, fluid, and predictable.  Smooth, fluid, and predictable is my goal in FMQ.  I’m sure you can see I have a ways to go.  But I do see progress in each “practice” piece that I do.  I think it is all about muscle memory (…and GUTS!).  Just like in handwriting.  Practice, practice, practice!

Well, after the practice was all over, the best part came.  Giving it!

Robyn delivered it for us to Sarah.  Debbi and I both got precious notes in the mail from our dear grown-up Sarah.  She cherishes her Black Sheep roots (growing up going to Black Sheep reunions). It’s always happy to welcome another lamb into the fold.  It was with great joy that we welcomed baby Claire.

(Note, Robyn’s feet!)