Baby Hand Print Quilt

As well as coaster making last week, I also made my second ever quilt.  This was as a present for a fellow Guide leader who is having a baby, and I wanted it to include all the hands of the Guides so it was a bit more personal.  I thought I was going to have all Summer to do this (as she's having the baby in September), but then I found out that I only had a week!  As it took me about 6 months to do The French Lady's quilt, this was a bit worrying, but thankfully with some good advice from a Macclesfield sewing expert I did it in time. Phew.

Here's the finished piece and the step by step process of how I made it...

Finished Quilt

Firstly I got all the Guides to draw around their hands onto card, and then I cut these out and transferred them onto bondaweb.  This was then ironed onto three different types of green fabric for the leaves.  In hindsight I wish I'd got the girls to cut out their hands themselves, as this took quite a while!

I then stuck some big pieces of paper together and drew out the design for the whole quilt.  From this design I copied the individual pieces (tree trunk, birds etc) onto yet more bondaweb and transferred this onto the appropriate materials.  Once I had all the pieces cut out, I spent a long time arranging them all on the background fabric, trying in particular to overlap the hands to cut down on sewing!

Ironed on, ready to sew

Once everything was fixed in place I sewed it all down.  Whilst bondaweb is great, it doesn't last forever and with it being a baby quilt I thought it would be handy if it was washable, so sewing was the best option for keeping it all together.  I used a satin stitch (a very close zigzag) to go round all the fabric edges, which was a fiddly business, particularly on the hands (tight curves to go round!).  So the early bits I did aren't great, but I did get better as I went on.

Once everything was sewed on, I cut out the wadding and back fabric for the quilt and laid everything together.  I then used a long running stitch to tack it all together, whilst trying not to sew it to the carpet (not that I've done that before...!).  This meant when I quilted it the layers wouldn't all move.  After I'd done this I drew lines onto the quilt where I was going to sew, to give me a guide.  I read on another blog recently about this magical pen which you can draw onto fabric with, but when you iron it then pen lines disappear!  If you sew then you'll understand what a revelation this is.  Apparently if you put the fabric in the freezer then the lines come back, but I don't think most people keep quilts in freezers.

My plan originally was to quilt the whole thing by hand, but as one outline took me over an hour, and I was pushed for time, I did the rest on the machine.  I got a darning foot for Christmas which made it a lot easier to do the lines freehand.  If you've never done this, its basically like trying to draw but moving the paper instead of the pen - requires a lot of concentration!  So there were quite a few errors but you can't really tell unless you examine closely.  As well as quilting the outlines, I also sewed around all the light coloured hands.  Then I gave it all a good iron (to remove the lines) and bound all the edges using instructions from my sewing book.

I'm really please with the finished piece and reckon it was worth the hard work!  I think this would be a nice present to do for a family - having all the family members hands as the leaves.  I was going to write all the girls names on using a fabric pen, but decided not to in the end.  I think if I was doing it for a family though then this would be a nice touch.  Hope you like it!