The Zig Zag Finish

Remember the third request for my brother and his wife’s baby quilt?

‘Please add a Flower of Life quilting design on this baby quilt.’

Some of you may be familiar with the Flower of Life design because its use in New Age imagery this century. With the name ‘Flower of Life’ only being just over 20 years old, the overlapping circle design itself is very much older and can be traced back to the 7th or 6th century BCE (wikipedia).

The request for this circle design came from a precious memory where the mother-to-be was taught how to draw this pattern by her grandfather. Isn’t it just a wonderful idea to incorporate such a memory into a gift for the new baby, thereby connecting the generations?

This specific circle design is normally created by using a pair of compasses. Marking a quilt top with an instrument that has a sharp point, just didn’t seem smart to me. And I don’t even have a pair of compasses that would be big enough for size circles I wanted.

I figured out a way how to mark the overlapping circles pattern onto my quilt top, without a pair of compasses and by using just a straight ruler and one 10″ circle. Would you like to know how I did that?

After the marking was done (water soluble pens), I had to figure out the best route to take with my stitches, the so-called stitch path. This turned out pretty straight forward, luckily. I am really happy with the result of all that marking and longarm ruler work.

I did have to ‘fudge’ the circles a little here and there of course (because of the fabric shifting a bit under the marking) but with the crinkle after washing the quilt, who will know what to look for, right? I used two layers of cotton batting for a slightly heavier end results and some extra poof.

I put a slightly wider binding on the quilt, so the decorative stitches would catch the whole of the double fold binding at the back. I placed the decorative stitch in ‘the ditch’ at the front of the quilt.

I lucked out with a backing fabric found online, that matched the colors on the front perfectly and that had a zig zag feel to it too. The quilting really shows up well, doesn’t it?

And my cat Toby just has to agree with the level of cuddliness of these baby quilt. Within 30 seconds of me putting the quilt on the grass for taking photos, he was making himself comfortable.

I think that this zig zag quilt design would work great as a lap quilt too and the colors would work really well in my living room too. Let’s put this on my to-make-list!

After I put the baby quilt together I found that I still had some scraps left, especially from the backing fabric and the grey. I added some more squares from the other fabrics and put this small extra baby quilt together that can be used with a car seat.

Yes, I did add more circles, but kept it simple for this little quilt; orange peels are perfect.

I hope that these two baby quilts will get lots of use and they will wear out from all the cuddles.

The smaller quilt got a shot cotton as a backing from a piece I had left over. I just adore that blue. And whatever side they use up in the the car seat, the baby will be hip and cool, right?!

I did a wider binding again, but I finished the binding by hand.

These two quilts were happily received, I have to report. The colors matched the baby’s room perfectly.

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Hugs

Esther