Baby Beluga Quilt

I'm so excited to share with you a new quilt I finished recently! 

The pattern is from the book Quilts for Kids by Ten Sisters Handicraft.  Carmen Geddes is one of the authors (who happens to live near me) so I have the pleasure of running into her from time to time. She is one of the kindest people I've met and an amazing long arm quilter, pattern designer, teacher, etc.  

This book is full of 16 darling projects for children of all ages.  Each project uses the Ten Sisters Easy Piecing Grids - which are grid panels printed on fusible, lightweight interfacing.  The grids come in 1", 1.5" or 2" squares and in packages of 6, 12 or 20 panels.

I chose the Baby Beluga quilt pattern that uses 6 grid panels (retail price = $26.99) in the 2" finished squares.  I used low volume prints from my stash for the background and lots of blue and aqua prints for the whale and bubbles.  It took a long time to cut out all those squares (about 756 to be exact) but I LOVE how scrappy it is!

The quilt finished at 56" x 56" and was custom quilted by Marion McClellan.  It was my first time using Marion but she is a friend and an amazing quilter.  I knew she would do a good job and she did not disappoint!

I always love "grid-work" and the vertical rows of loops look like bubbles!

I love it!

In case you're wondering about these grids,

I will give you my two cents on them...

It was fun to try them.  It was kind of a different style of quilting and could appeal to people who have a hard time matching up seams or who don't want to pin at intersections.  You won't have to take the time to piece all of those individual squares together or pin but you will have to spend time laying out all the squares in the right places (which I thought was kind of fun) and then ironing the squares to the fusible side of the panels and then clipping the seams at each intersection so the seams will lay flat.  Once you get everything in place you can sew the rows up really quickly!  The cost of the grids adds one more expense to your overall quilt making cost but sometimes it's worth it if it saves you some brain cells, am I right? ;)  Oh, and the interfacing does add a little more weight to the quilt itself, but it's still really soft and I can't even tell it's in there!

I backed this quilt with aqua minky and bound it in a Cotton + Steel gray dot fabric.  It's super soft and snugly!  Also, it's for sale in my Etsy shop if anyone is interested.  It was made with lots of time and love (and favorite fabrics from my stash) and I hope it goes to a good home! 

If nothing else, I hope this post inspires you to try something new - a new technique, a new product, a new color scheme - the sky is the limit!  What is something you want to try or have tried recently that you are excited about?  Please share, I'm dying to know!

Happy quilting!

~ Amber