Receiving Blanket Quilt

I just recently decided that I wanted to try my hand at quilting.  I've had a renewed interest in sewing recently, and have sewn a few bags, and decided I wanted to progress to quilting.

I immediately decided that for my first quilt, I wanted to make one for my daughter, as a kind of memento.  I have had a stack of her receiving blankets sitting in her room for quite some time, since we stopped using them for her, and I had the idea that I would cut up the receiving blankets into squares and piece them together to make her a quilt.  I also decided that I would back the quilt with some leftover sheets that matched her bedroom set.  When I was decorating her nursery, the crib sheet that matched her discontinued bedding set was nowhere to be found, but I could find sets of sheets in other sizes on Ebay (thank you Pottery Barn for making matching bedding sets from crib through queen size!).  I had bought a twin set and cut up one sheet to sew her crib sheet.  I figured I could use the leftover pieces, and the fitted sheet as well, to make a backing for the quilt.

Here's a pic of the Ava bedding, the crib sheet you see here is the sheet fabric I decided to use for the backing.

Pottery Barn's Ava bedding set

With my plan set, I went through the blankets, and picked out six different patterns in pink/white/green colors and patterns to match the PB Ava sheets I was going to use as backing.  I have a pink stripe that reminds me of the pink stripe in the quilted bedding, a couple of tone-on-tone pinks, a white with pink flower, and a green gingham that goes well with the green gingham ribbons on the bedding set.  My hope is that the quilt will nicely match her room, which has the above crib bedding, and also a double bed with the full bedding set on it.

I cut them up into 6 1/2 inch squares, with the plan that I would make a simple 6 square by 8 square quilt top.  I arranged the squares, and then started sewing.  A really horrible, inside-at-night picture of the quilt top pieces is below:

I then sewed the blocks together in rows, then sewed all the rows together.  I pieced the two strips leftover of the twin top sheet that I had cut to sew her crib sheet into a backing.  I've made my quilt sandwich, and just last night I began the quilting process.  I'm doing straight line quilting with the walking foot on my machine at 1 1/2 inch intervals, which results in quilting on every seam, down the center of every block, and then again through each half of the block between the seams and center quilting line.  I got about half done last night, and I'm hoping to do more tonight and maybe even finish it up.

I've already cut my binding strips, I picked out a cute pink and white striped fabric that was a remnant from my stash.  Hopefully I'll have everything completed in the next few days, in time to participate in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!