Tips For Selecting Baby Blankets

Have you ever needed to throw together a quick quilt? Many quilting pros laugh at the notion, but sometimes we need a quick gift to give and want to make it personal. Lap quilts and baby quilts are very easy to create on an embroidery machine.

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.

Blanket Quilt Machine quilting on the other hand, involves a sewing machine to sew the pieces together. In very much the same way, layers of fabric are stacked together, laid-out, batted and backed on a flat surface. They are pinned and the pieces are then moved through a sewing machine. This can be done in block form as in hand quilting or as a large piece. Again, the details are determined on the style preferred and the quilter's experience. This is a much faster process than the hand quilting and often a good place for a beginner to learn with quick results.

Wedding Blanket: From Africa to the Philippines, couples are wrapped in a blanket that is to be their marriage coverlet. Include this warm ritual in your wedding. Let friends with marriages you admire wrap you in the blanket. Does anyone in your life quilt? If so they'll need a LOT of forewarning! Use the quilt on your bed, or keep it on the couch for when you snuggle.

Now that you have completed the first go-around and shapes have been sewn to all five sides of the center piece, it is necessary to cut more angles from the pieces you have sewn down. Be brutal in cutting back, cutting from seam edge to seam edge, trying to achieve at least five more angles. Work toward a variety of shapes and sizes.

A hand quilter will use a frame or a hoop to keep all pieces together while using a variety of basic running stitches in and out of each piece while stretched taut. It's at this point where details are sewn with as little or as much as the quilter prefers. From the outlining of patterns to hand stitching every petal of every flower in each block. This is time consuming but often the most rewarding part of quilting.

Another way to make a memory quilt is to use all new fabric with a different approach. You could make each square a representation of some part or event of a child's life. Each square would be embellished by applique, embroidery, scanned pictures, iron-on letters, fabric paint or whatever you like. You could ask important people from the child's life to contribute a square or two and to sign their square with their name.