another simple baby quilt with tenugui

Our new friends Alex and Erica are having their first baby soon... an opportunity for me to make another very simple "one patch" baby quilt.  It is fast and satisfying work to cut 80 5-inch squares and arrange them randomly.  I love making simple scrappy quilts.  

In recent years Erica had spent two young-adult years living in Tokyo as a missionary for our church, so I knew that using lots of Japanese fabrics would be just the thing.  I surely brought back a lot of tenugui (traditional Japanese woven, hand dyed cotton hand towels) for use in such scrappy projects.



 Wait... what is wrong with this picture?.... Mount Fuji is upside down - that won't do! ...

 Here we go....

 The little pink and red carp, and the teal pigs, green flowers, and orange and yellow pastoral scenes - those are all cut from tenugui.  Filling in the gaps are random scraps from my stash including several 30's repros.  A little birdie told me that the new momma likes aqua, so I kept that in mind too.  I do find that teal/aqua is a terrific unifying color in scrap quilts.

I backed it with this adorable print, found at a local quilt shop: 

I quilted it diagonally, very simply in wavy lines, using a darning foot, with monofilament in the needle and cotton in the bobbin.  Like all the baby quilts I make, this one is simple and meant to withstand hard use and frequent washings.  I hope it will be used and enjoyed! 

Simple baby quilt with tenugui backing

Miss K is visiting from NYC - yay! - and one of the great joys in having her here has been sewing together.  We whipped up a simple baby quilt for a friend whose baby shower/ sayonara party is this week.

Easy to cut 80 5-inch squares from 30's repros: 

blue solids, and tenugui fabrics: 

Chain piecing made quick work of the top, with K piecing most of it.  

For the backing we used four lengths of tenugui fabric (found the other day at the country yukata fabric factory).  The material is sheet-thin and I wonder about its durability... but it is sure soft.  Julie Fukuda uses tenugui extensively and has written in detail about "The Art of Japanese Tenugui" here.  

Wavy free motion quilting, corner to corner - so fast and fun - I really appreciate machine quilting when it comes to making baby quilts, and machine quilting means the quilts are so durable, washable, can take a lot of hard use and don't need to be treated as precious objects.

The binding contains a subtle detail - the asanoha (hemp leaf) pattern, which in terms of traditional sashiko, is a protective symbol historically used for children's items.

asanoha (hemp leaf) sashiko pattern

I blogged about another simple baby quilt here:  http://aquilterbynight.blogspot.com/2012/10/sweet-4-patch-baby-quilt.html

Sweet 4-patch baby quilt

Aren't all baby quilts sweet?  Years ago I was a baby-quilt-making-machine (simple quilts, mind you)... but fell away from that when I started teaching.  Here in Japan I'm back to very part-time teaching, and so I do have that luxury of time for whipping up something cute like this for a gift.

In our church the women are organized as "visiting teachers" to help each other.  We each have a partner, and several ladies to visit monthly with a message and generally keep on our radar.  And we each have visiting teachers.  The beauty of this system is that ideally, no one slips through the cracks in terms of needs.  It's a great program in a setting like Tokyo, where there are expats coming and going all the time, with all kinds of needs - practical and emotional.  Almost all of us are living far away from family.

One of my own visiting teachers, a young Japanese woman married to an American and attending our English-speaking congregation,  is having a baby soon... hence.... my focus on whipping up a shower gift for her.

I brought out a handy UFO:

It was practically finished - just two rows left to piece.  Mostly 30's repros with a few batiks and one Japanese print (from before my Japan days, believe it or not) thrown in for fun.

Machine quilting went fast... first in the ditch between the blocks, and then some free motion.  While free-motion quilting I traveled straight through the four patches in the ditch to get to the white patches - easy and fast.  I meant for this large stippling to resemble puzzle pieces.

I tend to use monofilament thread in the needle - so that the quilting indentations show, but the thread itself doesn't show - it takes on the color of the fabric.  I just prefer a not-so-thready look.

The backing is a cute print I found in Nippori (fabric town) last year... originally to make an apron... but said apron never got made:)...

It's hard to see but I free-motioned some words in the border: "Lead me, Guide me, Walk beside me"... some of you will recognize these words from a favorite children's hymn. :).

Feels good to be back in baby-quilt mode, however briefly!

First quilt, baby quilts

Here's my first ever quilt, made in 1991.  Felt like it took about a million hours to complete - all by hand, with telephone tutoring from my Grandma every step of the way.  I hung it on the wall over Miss N's crib.  Here she is with it all grown up:).  It's a simple nine patch using fabric from my Mom, Grandma, and even Great-Grandma.  I struggled with and loved the process of making this quilt -  I was hooked!

This is the Dutch Doll baby quilt Grandma Mary Lou made for Miss N in 1992.  It remains one of my all-time favorite quilts.  Grandma's friend Millie helped her select fabrics.  It is machine quilted in a "hanging diamonds" pattern.

It was followed a year later by this Tulip Applique for Miss K, also machine pieced and quilted by Mary Lou.  The light green alternate blocks were made with fabric from my bridesmaids' dresses.

Simple baby quilt

Last week I visited my Grandma in Denver, and we whipped up this very, very simple baby quilt for her partner Al's first GREAT grandchild.  My Grandma picked out the fabrics - 30's repros from Harriet's Treadle Arts - and we laid out the blocks together.  We thought stripes... then, no... random will work best...

Love my Grandma's machine!  Bernina 830 Record, circa 1974

Sometimes the best quilt is the simple one that you can actually finish!

Linking with Fabric Tuesday over at Quilt Story today...