A Spiral Christmas Tree Skirt

OH BABY!

Nov 11th Note: Ok I truly thought UFO Sunday with the talented Leah Day on her blog here was every Sunday, so I posted this when I got it done after working on it last weekend (Nov 4). Either way it is GREAT that it is done! Done is good!
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Whoohoo! 
Back to the Baby Quilts! It is so much fun to sew for a new baby girl in our extended family. Getting ready to gift another handmade quilt to another wonderful family that we love.

I got out my stash drawer of fabrics and pulled out anything with reds and oranges. Most of those also had some form of gold tone to them. I worked off that and pulled as many fabrics as I thought I might need. I confess I am not yet a good judge of how much fabric it takes for specific sizes of quilts and I over-picked. Haha. You will see why in a bit.  

I have already used most of my pink stash on another  baby quilt a month or two ago see HERE. Since my goal is to use my stash, I am trying very, very hard NOT to buy more fabrics until I decrease my existing stash a good bit more.  I resisted the zombie-like-oh-so-hard-to-ignore urge to go out to the quilt store and buy dozens of brand new pink fabrics. This quilt will have a reds, corals and golds color scheme. Kind of like this inspiration from Design Seeds color palettes called Citrus Brights:

I needed an idea for my pattern next, so I browsed through the abundant quilt ideas on Pinterest. I loved the nine patch I saw HERE with wide open white blocks as spacers between each nine patch. Those wide open white areas were the perfect complement for the busier patterned  patches. This meant I had to go to the white cotton/muslin stash drawer and make sure I had enough plain white. I had an assortment of various sized white pieces but luckily enough to work!

I cut my strips 3.25 wide and sewed dozens of them together in rows of three.

I think I got a little carried away sewing but I wanted to use up these stash pieces!
After the rows are together, I cut them again 3.25 wide so I ended up with oodles of columns that each had 3 squares. Time to sew them together into 9 patches!

I wanted a little peppier look in some of the blocks so I did buy the orange and coral floral print in the center bottom 9 patch. It made those all 1980s and 1990s and 2000s fabrics look a little snappier and happier. Sometimes updating one pattern or fabric in a quilt makes the others all show off and perk up too.

I sewed for hours and ended up with WAY more 9 patches than I needed for a baby quilt! I needed only 10 for this project...but ended up with 36!  Ooops!  But I did meet my personal goal of using up those particular fabrics.

I tried a few layouts on the floor with the white blocks and came up with a design I liked. The white blocks lighten things up and really help accent the happy feel of the quilt.

 
I layed out more fabric for the backing. Spray basting is the way I secure my batting to the backing and the top to the batting when I sandwich a quilt. Then I pin it loosely here and there with straight pins just in case the spray basting might possibly shift. I have never had that happen so the pins are probably redundant but I grew up pinning quilts so it is a hard habit for me to break completely. 

Now we go to the machine and get ready to free motion quilt it.

 I am really making an effort to practice my free motion quilting on a regular basis. I am taking the Craftsy.com class from Leah Day.  Her website also shares some of her many Free Motion Quilting Project creative possibilities for doing your own quilting on your home machine. I am trying to be brave and try a few new patterns with each project that I do.  Those white blocks are challenging me to practice my meandering!

But first let's buy a tiny bit of pink and coral patterned fabric (above) to make the perfect coordinating border. This and one floral fat quarter are the only two purchases I made for this ENTIRE quilt. I love to use what I have on hand.  The color is a little more true in the photo below.

The coral print border was added AFTER  I machine quilted the top. It just seemed too small once I got it that far so I added the 2.5 inch border all around before I cut off any excess batting or backing. MUCH better!

All bordered in coral and bound in white --and ready to gift away.  I tossed it on the kitchen floor to take the pic which makes my angle look a little wonky here but it really is a true FLAT rectangle. :D

I love how it turned out and I have enough blocks to make two more identical baby girl quilts if I want to. We have a lot of little ones on the way for families we know so I probably will sew the quilts up and set them aside until needed. Never hurts to be prepared!