Swoon Baby Quilt the First

This is definitely one of my favorite quilts this year. I love that the front is all solids with cozy printed flannel on the back, I love the simple, modern feel of it, I love that it came together in only a couple of weeks, and I love that it was given to a close friend for her upcoming baby.

Let’s start with the pattern. I used the Swoon pattern from Thimble Blossoms and made just one 24” block. I added a 6” border for a 36” square quilt. You can see my inspirations here. It’s a very easy to follow pattern, with color diagrams that I found helpful. Normally, I don’t like to add borders, but I didn’t mind it on this small quilt.

All the fabric is from Pacific Fabrics in Everett. I knew that this quilt needed to feature green, blue and at least one jungle animal. I could not for the life of my find any jungle fabric I liked online, so I hit up Pacific Fabrics in person. There I found this mini elephant flannel from Timeless Treasures. Once I had my backing sorted, I chose four Kona solids from what was in stock in the store: Bleached White, Clover, Royal and Blueberry.

My goodness, I love using flannel as a backing! I polled my Instagram followers for tips on sewing with flannel and prewashed the fabric, according to their advice. It is so cozy and warm that I simply loved working with it. I almost didn’t want to finish hand sewing the binding, it was so comfy!

The quilting I chose is very similar to my Giant Snowburst Quilt: a big ‘x’ in the middle, then echo quilting to the edges. Instead of quilting the lines half an inch apart, this time I quilted them a full inch apart. It was quicker and I thought the less dense quilting would be comfier for a baby quilt. Another twist is that I used both white and green thread to quilt it. The central ‘x’ is green, along with every third line. The rest of the lines are white.

I cannot overstate how much I like this quilt. I might just keep making this one over and over for gifts, it’s so quick and satisfying!