Love and Cuddles

I haven't made a baby quilt in ages, but when I pieced a backing for Love Large,  my brain latched onto that backing design as the perfect start to a baby quilt.  I'm thrilled with how Love and Cuddles turned out.

Love and Cuddles baby quilt

Here's the inspiration quilt backing for reference.

Backing of Love Large was the inspiration for Love and Cuddles.

Step one towards turning this into a baby sized quilt was to scale down the size of the hearts.  I knew I'd need skinnier strips for a smaller heart but I still planned plain vertical strips.  The visual interest would come from the different fabrics.

When I started thinking about fabric amounts for a pattern I realized that at a smaller scale, a single strip of any one fabric wouldn't use a significant portion of even the smallest cut you can usually buy.  Some shops will cut as small as 1/8 yard, but many will round to 1/4 yards.  Either way, there would be a lot of leftover.

With that in mind, I looked for ways to make the heart visually interesting with only two colors.  Here's my little test block.  I was happy to be able to spin the seams in that middle section to minimize the bulk.  Pressing instructions in the pattern reflect that, or you can press to one side as you prefer.

Test block for Love and Cuddles

It was quick and easy.  I built the base, sliced it and rebuilt it. No individual squares to cut and sew together.  This definitely had potential.   They seemed  a little too small to take the stage all alone against the background panels, so I framed them for a more emphasis.

When I was ready to make the sample quilt, I knew I didn't want to use traditional pink or blue.  I thought some of the currently trendy less traditional neutral tones could look cute, but would look drab out of context on a patter cover.  With that in mind I headed to the quilt shop and browsed for an hour until prints from a 2023 collection from Riley Blake caught my eye.  With those in hand I picked out coordinating tone-on-tones to round out my fabric selection.

The stars and clouds prints and the plaid are from a collection called "It's a Boy", but I think the theme and the green and yellow prints are gender neutral.

It took me about 5 hours to make the top, from pressing the fabric to sewing the last stitch.  That included time to rip stitches and resew when I sewed a whole side panel on upside down. Oops! 

I moved on to the quilting before I took a photo of the top.  I kept the quilting vey simple to match the simple piecing.  The walking foot, as is often the case, was my tool of choice.  

First I stitched in the ditch along every seam in the heart and in the yellow frame, then filled in with a little bit of outline quilting.  Usually, I outline quilt 1/4" from the seams, but this time I chose to use 1/2" spacing.  This echoes the 1/2" between the sides of the hearts and the yellow frame.  I repeated the 1/2" spacing in the beadboard quilting in the background panels, just a small way to tie the quilting in the hearts with the quilting in the rest of the quilt.

Five generous quilters offfered to test the pattern for me.  I greatly appreciate their help.  Despite my careful proofreading and tech editing, there were still a couple of mistakes to catch, so I owe a huge thanks to Pat Minnick, Vicki O., Tammy Howell, Elizabeth, and Susan Brown.

City Line, the other quilt I designed while working on Love large, is up next.  There will be a quilt-along for that one!  I'm still working out the details, including the dates, but I'm committed to it :)

Time to go make dinner again.  I'm not inspired tonight.  I wrote a menu for the week, but none of what seemed appealing before I did the groceries is whetting my appetite today.  What do you do when that happens?

I'll figure something out.  In the meantime, happy quilting and I'll see you next time.

Joanne

Find the PDF version of the Love and Cuddles pattern in my Etsy shop or ask for the print version at your favourite quilt shop.