Anne, one of my bestest of buddies, just had her second daughter and since we were out of town for the big event I decided to try and make up for it with a quilt. Nothing says “I love you” like cotton. 
Anyway this is the second quilt I’ve made. I used Lotta Jansdotter’s book Simple Sewing for Baby as my guide and although I like this book very much I think one of us had her math off. I could easily be wrong, but I suspect that neither of us accounted for seam allowances, so the back of my quilt was bigger than the front and I had to cut to compensate.
I still had a pretty big wrinkle in the back after I started the actual quilting, so I ended up pushing the wrinkle all to one edge and sewing it down. This solution worked pretty well. The only other issue with the blanket was my own doing. I didn’t have the patience to wait until Cool Cottons was open and so instead of using one whole piece of batting I used two rectangles one way and then overlapped it with two more rectangles going the other direction. This made for a kind of bumpy ride which I’m hoping will smooth out over time. There is also a small triangle of quilt that seems to not have ANY batting and this is, of course, beneath the lightest fabric square. Lovely.
One of the reasons I chose to use Lotta’s pattern was the pocket. I added the O(for Opal) applique by using Pellon’s Wonder Under which is super easy to use and has become practically second nature to me after doing so many capes! All and all this was a labor of love for I have definitely caught the quilting bug. PZ really wants me to make her one next. I’m thinking I’ll make her one for Winter Solstice. Something to keep her nice and cozy.
