The Best Baby Shower Gifts

Then and only then was the quilt frames set up in the living room. They were four 8 foot long 2 x 4 pieces of lumber with a bumper pad made of old mattress pad attached so it would not splinter into the quilt or tear the blocks that had been so skillfully arranged.

Blanket Quilt Set your sewing machine to the standard seam allowance used for quilts, which is an exact quarter inch seam. One way to improve a block that is either too large or too small is to use the freezer paper method and square up the block before sewing it together. Gridded freezer paper makes the job easier, but the plain freezer paper will work to help make the block more even.

It is pretty to learn to sew quilt squares, you can do it by hand or with a machine. You can find an entire kit at the craft store that will provide you with the instructions, and all the material you need to make a square. Most of these kits you buy one square at a time, then put them all together. This makes quilting a little less overwhelming, since you only have to focus on getting one square at a time done. When it comes to the actual quilting of the blanket you can do it yourself or you can also pay someone else to do it for you. There are machines that make quilting very easy, but unless you are going to do a lot of quilting it might be more economical to have someone else do the quilting or do it by hand.

You don't have to be an expert quilter to make a special handmade baby crib quilt. First, you need to choose the perfect fabric for the baby crib quilt. If you're unsure of what design you might prefer, either take a trip to your local fabric store, or go on line to the one of the many retail dealers for their collections of ideas and baby crib quilt patterns. If this is your first attempt at the art of quilting, it is best to keep your pattern simple. Choose colors that are appropriate for the baby's gender, unless you do not know that, than yellow or white is a safe choice. Be sure you wash and lightly iron all fabrics before you start to cut.

Place a few straight pins at random places on the surface of the quilt. (Anywhere but on the lines.) This will keep the pieces from shifting during sewing.

Then we have the bumper. Bumpers go around the inside of a crib and provide padding between the slats of the crib and your precious baby's noggin. They also provide a way for your child to keep their arms and legs inside the crib while they sleep, thus helping to prevent any late-night cry sessions because an arm fell out the side of the crib, then got twisted. It's a fairly necessary piece of equipment, but can be used as a step when junior gets older, so it has it's time and age limit.

I scanned the photos and then printed them onto photo transfer sheets. I ironed the transfer on to a piece of white material that was just a little bit larger than the picture. The white square and photo was sewn on top of one of the 12" blue squares. I then added eyelet trim and blue ribbon around each photo. Putting dark blue ribbon on a light blue square, and light blue ribbon on a dark blue square.