Project: Baby Love

A lovely friend of mine is having a baby. A baby girl actually. She is due sometime next month.

Before I found out she knew it was a girl, I had completed my first pressie for the baby. Not knowing the sex of the baby, I decided to go with neutrals with a bit of blues, greens, and aquas.

Amy Butler fabrics and patterns are a big favourite of mine, so with some fabric I had from the night I met Amy and one of her patterns, I made this for the baby's room.

My friend loved it.

When she told me her baby was going to be a girl, I thought "oh no!!! I should've done it in pink!'. But she was cool with the gift. Apparently she doesn't want to be traditional with pinks and had already started painting animal canvases for the nursery.

What luck!

She is a fantastic artist and I can't wait to see what she's done for the nursery. She's only just finished work last week and is now on 12 months maternity leave.

While I've been on holidays I've finished another gift, bunting for the nursery, which I will give to her when the baby is born. It brings in complimentary fabrics, some Amy Butler and some fat quarters from Spotlight.

I finished it off with a neutral bias binding highlighted with a light aqua coloured zig zag trim. The photo isn't great, wrong lighting, sorry.

I started with a triangle template. Sides are 25cm and the top is 20cm. This one is cut from a thick card I had left over from an assignment last year, but you could use a graph paper template/pattern also and achieve the same result.

Materials:

• Template
• Scissors or cutting knife. The rotary cutters quilters use is also very good for this type of project.
• 5 patterned fabrics - fat quarter size is great and will give you sufficient fabric to make all the triangles needed for this. My project has 16 triangles (double sided) which makes about a 3 metre length.
• 3 metre length (packet) of bias about 2cm wide - I used Birch brand from Spotlight
• 3 metre length of matching trim - the zig zag I used was a 2.7 metre length, but this was still long enough
• Thread and sewing machine

To save time and thread, I sew my triangles in a row one after the other without trimming the thread until I've gone around a few. I also reverse stitch at the point to re-enforce the stitching before turning out the right way.

Trim the point, turn the triangles out the right way, finish the point by using something pointed to push it out. I find an old knitting needle is great for this.

Iron each triangle then set out the order of patterns for the finished bunting. Fold in half and iron the bias. Pin triangles to the folded bias in your order, leaving about 10 cm of bias at each end, then sew together with a straight stitch.

Finish with the contrast trim sewn to the bias. Fold over the extra bias to make a loop, this can be used to hang the bunting from curtain rails or the cot.