Whale, Hello Baby Quilt Tutorial

It's not very often that I sew something for myself. Not that I have a baby named Jacob that needed a baby quilt, but my niece sure does! We are so happy to announce that she has welcomed her third baby boy into the world. She is the best mother and I'm honored to make her something! Scroll all the way down to see this adorable quilt in its new home!

She mentioned that she had a whale theme and I happened to stumble across the PERFECT pattern on Pinterest: The Deep Blue Sea Quilt Tutorial...and the best part?? It's FREE! Designed by Kitchen Table Quilting- it easily walks you through curved piecing, which definitely seemed like a daunting task to me! I'll walk through the steps that I took to create this beautiful quilt!

Supplies:

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• Deep Blue Sea Quilt Tutorial: Free Pattern Download by Kitchen Table Quilting

• Kona Fabrics in Cyan, Sky, Navy, Capri & Aqua

• Whale Fabric

• Sewing Clips

• Heat n Bond Lite

• Creative Grids Shelly (Scallop) Quilting Ruler

Directions:

The first thing I had to do was decide on a color palette. Watch this video for a quick tip about a hack that I've discovered in color selection!

I decided to only go with five colors in this quilt and make it a little bit smaller. From Kona fabrics, I chose: Cyan, Sky, Navy, Capri & Aqua. I ordered half of a yard extra of navy to bind the quilt and for the name.

Following the pattern templates, I cut out the necessary pieces of all the fabrics. This was my first time trying curved piecing in a quilt. While I have experience using this technique for bags, it seemed more intimidating in a quilt! The pattern made it almost foolproof. I was very pleased with the end result and how nicely my curved piecing came together!

For the name...I decided that I wanted it to fit inside of a curve, with a whale sitting in the next one. After measuring, I saw that I had about a 9" x 2" or 3" space to work with for the name. In Canva, I pulled up a blank 8.5" x 11" sheet and sized Jacob's name accordingly, along with this adorable whale.

After printing this out, I flipped the name upside down and traced it onto Heat n Bond lite. Next, I fused it to the navy fabric. I carefully cut out the name and whale, then fused it into the curve over the lightest blue on my quilt top! To create the cute little spout, I free-motion quilted curved lines above the whale in a matching navy thread. It's starting to come together!

Last stop...quilting! I've had this scallop quilting ruler designed by Angela Walters (my all-time favorite) for a long time, and I was so excited to give it a try! Since this was a small quilt, and I wasn't in a hurry, I was happy to take my time making scallops for my great nephew.

The end result is something that I'm so excited to ship out!

I went a little crazy and also made a cute hand-embroidered swaddle for him to match. Find a tutorial on how to make these here. I'm definitely loving this whale theme! What has been your all-time favorite baby blanket/quilt?

My niece was sweet enough to send some photos! How cute is he?!