(mini-tut) tummy time strip quilt

A while ago, 2 of my good friends were both having boys, and we threw together a quick shower for them (it was the 4th child for each).  I wanted to make a couple of tummy time quilts for them and I had my eye on this fun Sugar Pop fabric by Liz Scott for Moda.    

It's several months later and I was finally able to take a picture of one of those cute little babies on his little mat.  I thought I'd throw a little tut at you, as I was so surprised at how many little quilts I was able to make out of so little fabric!

I ordered 1/2 yard of 5 different fabrics thinking I'd probably have a little bit left over, to possibly make a 3rd quilt somewhere down the road.

Turns out, with how I cut the strips, I am able to get 6 baby quilts out of these 5 small cuts of fabric.  Jack-pot!  I love to have a stash of baby presents ready to choose from when I have a shower to get to in a pinch!

Anyways, here we go:

Out of each of the 1/2 yard cuts, I cut 3-6inch x the length of the fabric strips.

I then separated each strip into 3 piles (each pile will give you 2 baby-size quilts, to give you a total of 6 quilts)

Using only 1 of the piles, I laid them out in the order I wanted them to fall, and then sewed the 5 long strips together to make 1 long skinny quilt top.  

I squared off the short edges, and then cut the "quilt top" exactly in half at 22 inches.  (Giving me my two quilt tops, ready to be bordered out, quilted and bound).

I dug through my scrap box to finish off the rest of this quilt, and found enough brown polka-dot fabric to border out both quilt tops (using 4 inch strips around the perimeter of each quilt top).

I was also able to find enough yardage of flannel to use as the backing fabric for both quilts, that somewhat went with the color scheme, though not an exact match...everything's better when it's free.)

Since I’m still practicing, I quilted each of these different ways.  The first one I tried to do similar to Brekyn’s quilt.  But because these were for boys, I tried not to do loops and I tried to make my cinnamon roll-looking things look more oblong, rather than girlie, round and swirly…they kind of remind me of waves…but maybe not.

The other quilt, I used my good old walking foot.  Rather than attempting to make it look like I really tried to sew straight, and failed, I tried to make perfectly un-straight lines.  I did a zig-zag sort of pattern in the middle section, perpendicular to the lines of the quilt top.  And then just did to irregularly spaced perimeter lines around the border.  

I was just so surprised to be able to get so many quits out of so little fabric, and was so happy to be able to sew 2 quilts at once, and then cut it in half!  Strip quilts are my fav!

{baby crew}