Take your pick.....

It's true, I'm a 'Nervous Nelly'. Full on!

I basted JP's* quilt and then panicked that I would muck up the quilting because I'm not confident with my new machine...oh, I mean 'sewing computer'.

So whilst I'm on a personal drive of 'not buying fabric, using what I have and not starting anything new' bandwagon, I kind of felt that the only solution I had was to work on a practice piece before I got stuck into the 'big boy quilt'.

I dislike working on slabs of fabric that aren't ultimately useful so I opted for a baby quilt inspired by my heroes, Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr. Their blog, Craft Nectar, features a gorgeous new quilt, Big Dots, which I've adapted to a baby sized version.

I cut 36" of Kona White (44" wide) and then a range of solid circles from my scrap bags using an old CD/DVD and the lid from the coffee jar!

It's striking! What's more, the appliqued circles gave me plenty (PLENTY) of opportunity to practice threading my machine, setting a blanket stitch (didn't like) and zig zag (wished I'd written down the size settings from the start!!!). I'm surprised that with all of the solid circle colour options, I had enough thread to match. I only purchased one reel and naturally it was a purple tone....if you read my blog, you'll know I don't do a lot of purple...yet!

The back is the very last of the Ikea stripe that I've had in the cupboard. I had just enough.

The binding is Kona Celery, a favourite and, you guessed it, from the cupboard.

So even though I'm on my stash pact bandwagon, I stuck to the 'no buy' bit (from a fabric point of view) and have ended up with a lovely little baby quilt to gift. What's more, it's circles on one side and stripes on the other, so take your pick as to which is the front and which is the back.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that even though I've had a bit of a wrestle with the BSR/free motion on the machine, the quilting worked out rather well, so now it's onto the big boy quilt!

* I use initials for children in my blog for anonymity but spell out adults names. Funny thing is, my brother's name is 'JP'! Too funny!