hand-stitched rail fence baby quilt

My youngest grandchild is three years old now. I cannot even handle it.

Before little Davis came along, and while I was still on a creative high from how well Journey’s watch-me-grow quilt turned out, I started planning the baby quilt I’d make for him. (Humor me with this is catching-up post; I have a few of those ahead.)

At that time, my daughter-in-law had only a vague idea how she planned to decorate his nursery, so I chose colors and design based on what I thought would work well with her style. I didn’t want to ask too many questions and risk spilling the beans about what I was doing!

Choosing quilt fabrics and colors

After much perusing online, I went with fabrics from Moda’s Smoke & Rust collection. I wanted to stay away from traditional baby-themed fabrics and loved these colors in shades of warm grey, rust, black, and white. The classic graphics made me think of menswear fabrics and ties.

Some of the fabrics even feature adventure-themed quotes from Tolkien, which was a fun touch.

These rail fence pattern blocks were simple but also a bit challenging to get just right. It took me quite some time and trial-and-error to lay them out and keep rearranging them until they all looked good together. This pattern also made me practice a whole lot of quarter inch seams and straight lines!

I used my sewing machine to piece the blocks and assemble the quilt top, then did all the binding and quilting by hand. I prefer hand-quilting because it feels so much more personal. There’s love in every single stitch.

I’m still new-ish at this.

This quilt had a lot of firsts for me, including:

• the first time I’d used a rotary cutter;

• the first time I’d made rail fence quilt blocks;

• the first time I quilted a pattern that didn’t follow the stitched lines;

• the first time I took apart and put back together anything that didn’t fit right so I could get all those little rectangles lined up to create nice square quilt blocks.

Adorableness overload.

I was absolutely tickled with how this quilt came out. I’d love to make quilts more often but that’s just not going to happen as often as I’d like at this stage in life. Still, empty nesting is not too far off, so I already have craft room plans that’ll make projects like this easier down the road.

My creative daughter Kathryn also wanted to make something special for her youngest nephew so she crocheted him a ridiculously adorable teddy bear. (The things she crochets are AMAZING.) We even made the bear a little bowtie to match the quilt, and did a photo shoot before packing everything up and sending it off.

Speaking of sending it off: I’d never shipped away something that took so long to hand make and the thought of it being lost or damaged was absolutely nerve-wracking til I knew it had arrived safely!

The quilt was absolutely perfect in Davis’ little nursery.

This photo is from his newborn photo shoot. Can you believe Diane had the sheets and everything else before she’d seen the quilt, and that I had never seen the crib or sheet or anything else before choosing the fabrics?