Easy and Kiddy Quilts

For the last couple of years I have seriously been trying to work through the older stuff in my stash.  With the pandemic, I have been able to use quite a bit of the really old/ugly (the what was I thinking? fabric) in charity related items (masks, scrub bags, etc.).  But I still have quite a bit of stuff that I like, but just want to get out of my cupboard.  I'm getting there.

I love penguins and had a little stash of penguin fabric, which included this panel.  It made up into a very cute little kiddy quilt.  Initially, I would have found a "worthy" recipient as we didn't have any little people in our lives.  But then, our youngest son and his wife presented us with a little granddaughter!  So she will get this quilt eventually.  

And (below) a close up of the quilting.  I cross hatched the 2" squares and then treated the panel as if it was applique.

Here is another panel - picked up at the Red Deer quilt show a few years ago (probably 5 or 6!).  Halloween themed.  I've got a bunch of Halloween quilts now - not quite sure what I was thinking - but the fabric is so darn cute and a lot of it was on sale, of course.  Anyway, about 3 or 4 Halloween quilts later, I think I've used most of it.

And below are some shots of the quilting.

Here we are, back with penguins.  Two penguin prints.  I cut each piece into as many 6" squares as would go.  I literally used my 6" x 24" ruler so the squares actually finish at 5 1/2".  Then I framed them.  This is a super simple and fast quilt but I really love the finished look of it!  Just goes to show the KISS principle rules!

I liked the penguins so much, I decided to do exactly the same thing with a bunch of New Zealand themed FQs that I picked up on our NZ trip a few years ago.

And with the left over NZ prints, I made the quilt below.  There were some "whole" squares, but I had to piece quite a few of them.  My initial idea was to frame in alternating black and white, but at the last minute, I decided to make coloured frames (resulting in the quilt above).  So for the second one, I thought I'd try my B/W idea (with the exception of using some blocks that were left over from the first quilt - no way was I going to take them apart and reframe them!).  In the end, I was very happy I decided on the coloured frames, I like them a lot better than the B/W below.  What do you think?

And I had to dig around to find some pix of the quilting, but I did!

And another panel.  This one has a bit of a story.  Our nephew requested a baby quilt for his wife's niece's baby.  I figured I could do a fast quilt starting with a panel so went out and got this panel especially for their quilt after determining that the Mom likes giraffes.  If you look closely, you'll see a giraffe in the panel.  But why make something easy when you can make it hard?  I spent quit a bit of time making then quilting this quilt.  In the end, I liked it too much to give away and I would have had to charge a LOT for it - probably more than they were willing to pay.  So I decided to keep it for my granddaughter (she's going to have a pile of quilts!)  Then I went out and got a second panel (the same one) and framed it with a few rows of squares and some simple quilting.  I didn't even get a pix of that one before I mailed it!

So there you go - the moral of the story here is for a fast kid's quilt, start with a panel and keep the framing and quilting simple.  Also, for a very effective but easy quilt for novelty prints, just cut them into large squares and frame them!