How to wrap a Quilt for a pink baby shower.

How to wrap a Quilt for a pink baby shower.

I know that I have been so slack with my blogging and sewing lately, and while I am hoping to turn that around this year... as always, I will just have to see how I go. Unfortunately studying full time at home, doesn't leave a great amount of time available for anything remotely fun... like sewing. 

Especially when you add things like virus/malware attacks during writing an assignment. Or having to stay up far too late to wait out a thunderstorm and then submit an assignment online. Oh the joys of studying online in Queensland's storm season.

I am still studying my degree online, and while at the moment it feels that it is taking forever, I am slowly, slowly getting it done.

I have called this quilt. I heart Raspberry. Due to the faint heart pattern on the white boarders and the Jelly Roll used being called Raspberry Parlour. I've made this quilt for a friend's baby shower for baby number two.

This quilt measures 43 inches across by 66.5 inches down. Or for those of us who use the metric system, that's 110 cms across by 169.5 cms down. So this is a decent sized single bed quilt.

I used red thread for quilting the top, to contrast with the white love heart boarders around the red and pink central jelly roll fabrics. For the bottom I used an ivory thread which really popped against the dark background on the backing. I used Gutermann threads, the red was colour 156 and the ivory was colour 919.

The batting or wadding of the quilt is natural cosy 100% cotton quilt batting that I've purchased pre bagged from Spotlight. This time I cut a queen-size piece of batting in half and have used it for two smaller quilts. Not sure if it worked out to be cheaper that way, but it was what I had on hand.

The jelly roll was purchased from The Quilters Store in Salisbury. Since moving to the south side of Brisbane, I've slowly been able to explore the different stores on this side of town. (Now I have the best of both sides of town, as I can go and visit the quilt shops on the north side when I visit with friends or relatives.)

The jelly roll/rolie polie used to construct this quilt is called Raspberry Parlour by Riley Blake designs. When looking for ideas on how to make a quilt from a jelly roll I stumbled across some great ideas such as the 'Jelly Roll Quilt Race' on YouTube. My favourite video was the one by the Missouri Star Quilt Company.

Although I didn't like the look of the angle of her strips when pieced together, so I just joined them straight.

The backing is a mix of black homespun and a lovely raspberry and white print fabric. I've cut the raspberry fabric slightly off centre. The white quilted thread really stands out on the black backing fabric, but blends in with the print fabric.

The binding is a fabric which has a mixture of both red and black colours which I felt would look good from the front to frame the quilt, as well as from the back.

I really enjoyed how quickly the jelly roll strips made up the centre of the quilt. It was fun to do. I'm already hooked and plan to do more quilts in this style.

As you can see from the photo this is how I wrapped the quilt for the baby shower. The ribbon was just long enough at 2 meters.