Aidan's Baby Quilt

In May of 2004, I started to make two (more) baby quilts. Four of my friends in Halifax (two couples) were having babies about 6 weeks apart. I hemmed and hawed about making quilts for both of them (making one quilt is a huge task, let alone making two at the same time) but in the end, the quilting bug won out. The one on the left was made for Kale Boutilier, and has its own section. The one on the right was made for Aidan Smith.

I think of Aidan's quilt as the "cat quilt" and Kale's as the "Duck Quilt".

As with all of my other quilts, these are 100% hand-sewn and hand-quilted. Even the seam binding is made by hand.

I would turn this image on its side so you can see what the quilt looks like when it's upright, but this photo was taken at an angle, so the quilt looks uneven if I do that. Oops.

The colours look a little pale here, but the light purple is actually a purple gingham. Aidan's nursery is painted this colour, so I made the quilt to match.

I made the cat designs from stencils I bought at the local art supply store. I used iron-on interfacing to fix the design on the fabric, then cut a quarter-inch seam around it, and appliqued them onto the individual squares, turning the seam as I went.

The interfacing adds a nice depth to the design, as it makes the cats puff up a bit more when they're quilted.

Each of the squares is 8 inches across, so the finished quilt is 32 x 40 inches.

Here you can see the back of the quilt. This is my first time putting a "tag" on my quilts, but I like the idea of it. Like an artist signing his or her work, this is a way for me to "sign" my quilt. It's also a nice reminder of when the quilt was made and for what occasion.

The design for this tag is taken from a book called the Encyclopedia of Classic Quilt Patterns. I took it to my local copy shop and they transferred it onto the fabric for me.