Colorful Cross Baby Quilt (An Easy Way to Match Fabrics)

I make a lot of quilts with precuts, but sometimes I love to make a run to my local Joann Fabrics and whip up a baby quilt. I often spend hours wandering the aisles, looking for something (anything!) to match the fabrics I've already chosen for a quilt. Because as many of you may know, despite the amazing selection at Joann, it is hard to match enough fabrics to coordinate a full quilt. 

And so, my new solution. Choose one (just one!) key fabric. That's right, no twelve coordinating prints this time. Just. Choose. One. I went with a darling baby-themed animal print, which I used as my back plus one of my front fabrics. 

Now take your one print and match it color by color. Grab lots of solid colors or small-print fabrics that match just one color in your main fabric. I chose two oranges, a dark gray, a light gray, yellow, and two mint greens. Suddenly all your "random" color choices come together in one beautiful quilt! You can do this with any pattern, any color grouping. So have fun!

Fabric:

1 1/2 yards of main patterned fabric

1/4 yard (or fat quarters) of 6-10 coordinating fabrics

1/3 yard of fabric for binding

1 1/4 yard of quilt batting or flannel

Basic Instructions:

Cut fabric into 3 1/2" squares and 3 1/2" x 9 1/2" strips (2 squares for every one strip). Before piecing, lay out full quilt on the floor to be sure your strips and squares align properly. Sew in rows of square, square, strip. Once rows are sewn together, piece rows together into full quilt. Layer back, batting (or flannel), and pieced quilt. Pin, then quilt. I quilted each cross individually. Finish with binding.

Bunny Hill Baby Quilt

Baby quilts are one of my favorite sewing projects. They are fairly quick and give me a chance to get creative. This sweet little boy bunny quilt was actually leftover from a quilt I made 3 years ago. My friend had a baby girl in 2013, and she just had a baby boy. Hooray for matching quilts! Typically with a quilt like this, I buy one Moda Charm Pack, but here I used the leftovers of two packs that I combined. You can also just cut out squares of your own fabric scraps for the same look.

Fabric:
1 Moda Charm Pack (I used Windsor Lane by Bunny Hill Designs for Moda)
   --OR-- 48 5"x5" squares
1 yard all-natural quilt batting or light-colored flannel
1 yard of coordinating fabric for backing
1/3 yard of coordinating fabric for binding

Quick Instructions:

First, I sewed all the pre-cut squares together in rows of 8. Then I went back and sliced the rows in half longways to make the narrower 2.5" rectangles. Finally, I sewed the rectangles together in strips, 4 across by 8 down. I made three of these long strips total. Finally, I added a 4 inch white (or any solid color) strip between the patchwork strips. I quilted with a simple "follow the seams" style on all long-ways seams. Then I did a matching binding and we're done!

Be sure to use a large, flat surface to pin your quilt. I like to pin with curved quilter's safety pins.

Quilted, bound, and ready for baby!

You can see here I used a simple color-block pattern. When I sewed this I chose colors at random to make the quilt more visually interesting. The easiest way to do that is to put all the squares in a paper bag and draw at random. Then when I lay out bigger pieces, I just try to be sure like colors aren't touching.

Marmalade Moda Charm Pack Baby Quilt

Thanks for all the love on this post! It's currently the most popular post on The Domestic Engineer. While the fabric I used isn't available any more, you can use the same type of pre-cut squares in many different patterns: Moda Charm Packs. Happy quilting!

I have a soft spot for fabric. Honestly, it's more of a lifelong love affair, and well, let's just say I have a pretty large bin of fabric that lives in my house.

Ben and I were up in the mountains over a weekend in January with some friends and we came across the most darling little quilt shop. It was filled with all kinds of beautiful fabrics and the walls were covered in quilts. When we walked in, this sweet old lady served us tea. Seriously girls, she served us tea in china tea cups. I decided right then and there I wanted to live in that quilt shop. Miraculously, I made it out without spending my entire life savings. I did, however, buy a darling little charm pack that turned into this quilt.

What's a charm pack you might be wondering? Well, Moda Fabrics sells packages of fabric pre-cut into 5 inch squares (and lots of others sizes too!). All the fabrics coordinate, but they're all different. That makes for a perfect quilt! I bought the Marmalade charm pack and turned it into this quilt I found through Pinterest.

You might have noticed a quilt in my post about the baby shower earlier this week, and that's the same quilt! My friend loved it and I had such a fun time making it.

The pattern I used can be found here and was quite simple. You just match up your squares, sew them together, and add sashing around them. All the fabrics in the center are from the Marmalade charm pack. The white was something I had left over from another project, and I bought the pink sashing and the polka dot backing at Joann's. 

I decided to try a new technique with this quilt and did a diagonal straight line quilt. I absolutely love the way it turned out! For the spacing, I moved my needle as far to the left as possible and used the right side of the presser foot as a guide. It ended up being around 1/2 inch spacing. 

Of course, Eli had to help by trying out the quilt. He seemed to give it his stamp of approval.

I absolutely love the way the colors worked together! Another great bonus was that the quilt only used 25 of the 42 squares in the charm pack. I realized that means that if I buy 2 identical charm packs, I can make 3 quilts. I'm planning to buy another Marmalade one and pick out one for boys as well. If your'e on the hunt for charm packs for your own quilt, check out Moda Charm Packs on Amazon! I'm always amazed at how much Amazon sells and their quilting precuts are no exception!