Day 1

As someone who loves children, when I found out my good buddy was finally going to be a dad, I wanted to make something really special for his new bundle of joy! :-) Just like with Ralphie, Chris and I became friends through a mutual interest – the Ford GT. The baby is going to be a boy and is due sometime in February. It is the end of December right now, so I have at least a month to put something together. But what?

When I had my little baby two years ago, one of my sisters presented her with a beautiful patchwork baby quilt. Another sister sewed a special baby bib for her. And yet another had a Christmas ornament made with her name and date of birth. There were a lot of ideas I had, but I wanted to try something I’ve never tried before, and I wanted something the baby could enjoy for a long time. So… I decided to make a baby quilt.

The first thing to do was figure out the design. Most baby quilts are one-sided, but I thought I would go all out and do a double-sided quilt. Why? Well, one side would be to put face up in the crib for the baby to sleep on, and the other side would be to put face up on the floor for the baby to play on. These designs would have to be very different, but still blend together.

I spent a bit of time looking at designs for baby quilts. I did not see any that I really liked, but I did get a few good ideas. I want something that incorporates the GT theme since it is a boy and that is the connection I have with his dad. :-) I also want something that can be washed a lot (as I expect it will get dirty playing with it on the floor), so it needs to be quite durable. And, I want something that is darker and less “flashy” on one side for the bedroom, but more colorful and playful on the other side to keep the baby entertained while playing.

Using Power Point, I drew up a few designs. The first design contained a star pattern made out of triangles and squares. I thought I could use primary colors for the stars (red, orange, yellow, and green) and use a blue background. The bright colors would be for the baby to play on. Inside the stars, I could put a different GT - different colors and different angles. I knew I needed a border that would be a different blue material, and considered a rainbow of colors around the border. I thought about using 3 different GT designs. As you can see in the image, I used regular shapes (sun, hourglass, and heart) with the different colors of the GT, to see how the colors would look together.

I wasn't sure about the border - the rainbow colors were too much. So, I tried using a black and white border, as well as a red/orange and green/yellow one. Then I thought it would look cool to have GTs around the border. I replaced the hourglass, sun, and hearts with actual GT's that I would later need to make patterns for, and also put GT's around the border. Here is what the second design looked like.

I then decided to make the border smaller, as it was competing with the images in the stars, and created a pattern for the cars in the border, using different colors. Being patterns rather than pictures, I would use fabric to cut them out, and then sew them into place. Once I did this, I experimented with using only 6 images, and making them larger. Here are designs #3 and #4:

The design still looked too "loud". I asked my sisters and a couple of friends what they thought, and most agreed. I would have to find a different pattern - or leave the cars off of the border.

The next step was to design the other side that was for sleeping rather than playing. I thought that using the car border rather than just a different material would look nice, but I may need to get rid of that idea, depending on what fabric I can find... For the sleep side of the quilt, I will use the same border as the play side, and will keep the background blue. However, I would like to use a picture of Chris' GT. Here is what I came up with:

I am not sure how to get the picture on the quilt yet, and I am also not sure about the car border or the design on the play side of the quilt. I will wait until tomorrow and see if my sisters have any additional comments to make - it should definitely help to have another pair of eyes looking at it!