This spring I worked on a baby quilt for Fat Quarterly. It was published yesterday in Issue 14 of their ezine. If you didn’t see the issue, take a look at the preview here. It is filled with inspiration!

The design for the quilt was one I had in mind for a while. I showed the stack of fabrics for it a year ago.The quilt features a rainbow of color in three different values. Visual spectrum from red to indigo is often plotted on a logarithmic scale. At least, this is what I recall from the different physics courses I followed. Here it’s my  engineering background who’s insinuating itself in my quilting design! Anyway, this has inspired me to do 3 rows of different widths from darker to lighter being longer to shorter. For the quilting, I wanted to emphasize the design. So, I decided to do straight line quilting, but to use a logarithmic grid to space the lines. I repeated the grid 4 times.

For those of you who are more familiar with my quilting experience, you know that I’m not that comfortable with straight line quilting. Having to deliver a quilt with straight line quilting, put a bit of pressure on me. But, I didn’t want to leave that out as I thought it really added to the design. I decided to put all chances on my side.

First, I used spray basting instead of pins. This was a first time for me. Below is my setup. I’m not a big a fan of putting glue on fabric, even though I know it will all wash away. Also, I hate spraying something that smells bad. Just like when my husband needs to paint some car parts in his garage and it smells all over the house. I did my spray basting on an old sheet installed on my deck. It went well and I’m sure it helped a lot in avoiding the shifting. Still, this is not something I would do inside the house in the winter when you can’t open the windows.

Other things that probably helped were my new walking foot and the thread I used. I had broke the plastic piece holding the guide on my foot. When looking for a replacement part, I learned that Janome made a new walking foot with a guide that could be put both sides of the foot. I find this really practical, so I decided to order one.

I read so much good things about Aurifil online, that I decided to give it a try for this quilt. People from Aurifil and the lady from the store I ordered it from, helped me find the color that would match the background fabric which is Kona in Ash (2615, Aluminium). A big thanks to them. I used the 40 wt thread. I appreciated quilting with it. Did it make a difference? I couldn’t say. But, I’ll definitively those threads again. One major benefits is the large spools you can order.

I’m really glad of how the quilting turned out. The texture was even nicer after washing.

All fabrics used for the front and binding are Kona cottons from Robert Kaufman. The back panel is the print Just Hanging in Natural from Alexander Henry. I wanted a large print that a child would love and that would feature the different colors of the rainbow.

The quilt design is simple, but I think it would bring a contemporary feel to a baby’s room. And I’m sure a baby would love seeing all those colors!