"Dragon" Baby Quilt - Meek Manor

I had two dear friends pregnant and due the same week in August. One quilt (Babe’s Toy Box) was finished before the baby arrived, partially because my friend was moving away. I had grand goals to have this second dragon baby quilt done as well, but when I went to order the fabric and get it started, the fabric was on backorder. Thwarted!

Now, normally I probably would have gone looking for different fabric, but they had a very specific theme (dragons), and I didn’t want to disappoint. Mix the dragon theme with the colors of the nursery, lavender and yellow, and I didn’t have a lot of options. Actually, I felt fairly lucky that I’d even found one option! So, we waited for the fabric (“The Dragons” from the Monkey’s Bizness collection for Alexander Henry Fabrics) to come back into stock.

The fabric arrived the week before the baby shower, about six weeks after the little one arrived. I was bound and determined to have something to bring to the shower, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it finished. I’d found a fairly simple pattern (Baby Bites from Modern Quilt Relish) that would really highlight the dragon fabrics, and I headed to Quilter’s Way to get coordinating fabrics.

I made the quilt slightly bigger than the pattern size, because I wanted the fussy cut dragon squares to be slightly bigger (9″ rather than 8″). I had so much fun fussy cutting the dragons so that each square was very different and most of the dragons in the fabric were included. I was glad I’d ordered plenty of fabric, though! Getting those fussy cut just the way I wanted took quite a bit of fabric.

I did get the top done in time for the baby shower, so I showed it to the mama and a few others. It felt kind of blah un-quilted, but I knew that once I got it quilted on the longarm it would be quite fun. Oh, and backing with the luscious white Cuddle makes it so super cuddly! I schedule time at Quilter’s Way to use the longarm the next week, and I was thrilled with how the quilting added so much dimension to the quilt. I bound the quilt and brought it to a lunch/play date to deliver.

(I had to share the photo above, because you can see a little imprint of my own bump under the quilt, which cracks me up. Photo credit: Jane Barnett, owner of Quilter’s Way, posted on Instagram.)

I think the sweet little one approves!