My Two Silent Auction Quilts

For the Waco Quilt Show this week, I committed myself at one of our Guild meetings to donating two baby quilts for our silent auction.  Knowing that I had many juvenile fabrics on hand, leftover from various baby quilts I've made through the years, I thought I could quickly complete two.  I could have done that, had I started earlier! I began one some months ago, but left the borders, the quilting, and the binding until this past weekend.  And that was only one quilt.  For the other, I decided to make a simple receiving-blanket type "quilt" from soft Minkee fabrics, backed with flannel.  It isn't technically a quilt because (1) it doesn't have the typical 3 layers of top, batting, and backing (no batting) and (2) it has no quilting!

I'm quite happy with the first quilt that I made.  I used coordinating fabrics, depicting pairs of animals, so I am calling it "The Animals Came, Two by Two," though I'm not putting that name on my label, which simply has my name on it.  The Minkee blanket--well, the colors are nice!  I found this slipperly, stretchy fabric rather hard to work with.  It is soft and comfy, though, so perhaps someone will find it worthy of a bid.

Now for some photos of the two silent auction quilts:

The block pattern is the tried and true Log Cabin, with an unusually large
center square, all the better to show off the fabric.  It has a narrow yellow
inner border, wide borders of two different fabrics, and corner-stone
blocks.  I bound the quilt with the same fabric used
in the top and bottom borders.

This shows one of the complete log cabin blocks, with the dark side (green and red)
and the light side (blue and yellow).  The green "log" to the right is actually the green
log for the next-door block, not a part of this one.  My favorite animals
in this print are the elephants and the giraffes!

I added the "corner post" blocks, smaller log cabins,
to make a definite division between the two border fabrics.

This was the first quilt in many years for which I machine quilted the entire thing.
Here the backing fabric (I thought this quilt needed some fish!) shows the
free motion quilting better than the top does.  I deliberately chose a dark blue
thread for the top, to make the amateurish quilting less obvious!

This block shows the "straight-line" machine quilting that I did.
A serpentine stitch in the yellow and red logs.  A straight stitch
in the blue ones.  Back to the serpentine in the yellow inner border.
The green log also has a serpentine stitch.  For the center square and the borders,
I free-motioned stitched loose and casual loops and circles around each animal, and then added
some loops between animals, where there was empty space.

I used two coordinating border fabrics because I didn't have enough
of either one to make four.  The top and bottom border fabric has
 pairs of animal faces, and it includes many animals
not featured in the other fabric. Most of the animals
appear to be smiling.  I really love the pink pigs and the black
and white raccoons!

Here's the Minkee blanket.  I did have fun devising
the pattern.  As I was laying it out, I repeated it to myself
as I laid it out starting on the bottom left:
"Pink, green, blue, pink, pink."
And then starting again on the bottom, the next vertical row
began with a green square,and I followed
 the same sequence of colors.  I was
delighted to discover that
this pattern resulted in nice diagonal
lines of the three colors.

I used a baby-animal printed flannel for the backing, which has the blues and greens, and at least the pig
has a pink face!  There are really cute descriptions for each animal, such as
"Baby chick skips in the rain; baby piggy plays in the mud; baby turtle
strolls with lady bug."  I like to imagine a mommy reading these to her
baby as she rocks him or her!

Some of the Minkee has raised dots;
some has stripes;
others, stars; and
still others,
plain.