Baby Balloons

When I found out I was pregnant with Claire (Little Bug on the blog) I knew I wanted to make a baby quilt for her.

It was hard to decide what to do...I didn't want anything too cutesy, but I also didn't want anything too grown up.

I also planned to have a gender neutral nursery, so I wanted the quilt to be relatively gender neutral, too.

Enter: hot air balloons

After much scouring of Pinterest, I decided that indeed, a quilt with hot air balloons was the way to go. Next, I needed to decide how I wanted this thing to look.

I don't prefer to sew by hand, so complicated applique was out of the question.  Trying to stick with a more modern approach, I decided to keep the balloons as simple as possible.

I decided to machine applique circles as the balloons, and then machine applique brown trapezoids as the baskets underneath.  I used brown thread in straight lines as the ropes attaching the two.

I can't choose a favorite balloon!

For the finishing, I machine quilted around the balloons as a whole (don't look too closely...the outline isn't very even sometimes), as well as around the squares, and I free-motioned wavy lines on the outside borders.

I LOVE the border fabric, which I also used on the back. It's so playful, and I think it really ties all of the balloons together.

This is a small crib sized quilt, and is made with fabric from my stash. Most balloons were made from charm pack squares.

I've thought about writing up a pattern for this. Any interest?

Until next time,

~Kristen