Ombre Baby Quilt Tutorial

When my best friend found out she was having her first baby girl, I knew I’d be making her a quilt. Once I saw sweet baby Ella’s nursery was going to be purple, I wanted to create a blanket that was full-out purple with some kind of black and white. This quilt was so much fun to make – quick, gratifying, and so incredibly soft.

Materials:

(1 total yard of 4 different shades of a single color- I used a 40% off coupon for each piece!)

1/4 yard shade 1

1/4 yard shade 2

1/4 yard shae 3

1/4 yard shade 4

**(I ended up asking the cutter at Joann’s to give me an inch more than a 1/4 yard for each piece so I could trim down the strips to be 1/4 yard exactly with straight edges- I’m never pleased with how choppy they cut their fabric!)**

1 yard of backing fabric

(mine came from Ikea and it is a little bit thin but super, super soft)

1/3 of a yard of binding fabric (I used the same fabric as my backing)

1 yard of warm and white natural batting (if your backing isn’t white, you can use warm and natural but if your backing needs to stay bright white, make sure your batting is bright white too!)

white cotton thread

sewing machine

iron

ironing board

rotary cutter

cutting mat

basting pins

1. Trim each 1/4 yard of quilt top fabric to be exactly 1/4 yard wide.

2. Using a 1/4 inch seam allowance, sew each strip together starting with the lightest shade and working your way to the dark.  I didn’t find pinning necessary here as your just match up your straight edge for the whole seam. Press your seams toward the darker fabrics.

3. Iron any wrinkles in your backing fabric and prepare your quilt sandwich:

-smooth out backing on a flat surface (dining room table or wood floor) and tape all four edges to the surface so the blanket is as flight and taught as possible without any wrinkles or pulls.

– lay batting out on top of that and tape corners down gently, being careful not to disrupt backing

-finally, lay pieced, ombre quilt top on top of the batting

4. Use basting pins (look like curved safety pins) to bast your quilt. Start pining in the middle and work your way out smoothing the fabric as you go.

5. Remove all the tape.

6. You are going to quilt this blanket by sewing straight lines on either side of your colored fabric seams – that means you will have 6 total quilt lines. Use your presser foot as a guide, following the seam line as you sew.

7. Prepare your binding strips.

-using your rotary cutter, trip strips the width of your binding fabric that are 2.5″ wide. If you are really good and like a narrower binding, you could make these strips 2.25″. This is a STRAIGHT GRAIN binding, i.e. NOT cut on the bias.

– sew these strips together using the diagonal seam method illustrated very well by Rita Hodge from Red Pepper Quilts (click HERE)

-iron the  strips in half so they are 1.25″ wide (or 1.125″ wide if you are going with a narrower binding)

8. Starting with the BACKING FACING UP, start stitching your binding to the quilt. Click HERE for an in depth tutorial on finishing your quilt fully on machine.

That’s it! Your quilt is finished. I like to run my through the washer and dryer before gifting but that is just a personal preference. I promise Mom and baby will love it forever.

xo

-J