Baby Blankets Make Great Baby Shower Gifts

First up is the baby quilt or blanket. Useful most of the year, it can be a little much for your bundle of joy during the summer. But for spring and fall, and especially winter, it will keep your new child toasty and snug. Most people will have more than one blanket for their child, either from previous children or from gifts, so this may not be too necessary.

In the case of producing a plastic template, over the design the clear plastic is placed and around each shape a seam allowance drawn and it is then cut out.

Blanket Quilt Turn and press this rectangle over the seam allowance, again pressing away from the center piece. Trim the seam allowance close to the stitching line.

In the early days of quilting, any suitable material, from an old blanket to cotton wadding, was placed between the patched pieces and an old sheet and then put onto the quilting frame, which kept the quilt's layers stretched tight while the quilter worked away.

Baby quilt patterns can be purchased as part of a quilting kit, or found in magazines, books, and quilting stores. It is also quite easy to piece together a quilt of your own design using leftover fabric. You might want to consider using a regular sized pattern, and scaling it down to a smaller size, such as 36 x 45 inches. The size of course is up to you.

Always wash your handmade quilt in warm or cold water using the delicate cycle on your washing machine. The individual blocks may be made up of slightly different fabrics which will shrink differently. Also, the vibrant colors may fade over time from hot water.

Rotary cutters have round blades that enable you to cut straight-edge shapes more quickly and accurately than scissors can. They come with various blade sizes. (A good size for a first blade is 45 mm.) Experiment with handle styles to see which you prefer as they come in various shapes and sizes.

Another way to make a memory quilt is to use all new fabric with a different approach. You could make each square a representation of some part or event of a child's life. Each square would be embellished by applique, embroidery, scanned pictures, iron-on letters, fabric paint or whatever you like. You could ask important people from the child's life to contribute a square or two and to sign their square with their name.