Preemie Quilts

These three little preemie quilts began as leftover pieces from a baby quilt I made for my great niece 3 years ago. It was a 'blended quilt', meaning the colors flow together, as in many antique quilts, particularly florals, instead of having vivid separating lines or blocks. I've made several and really enjoy the process. It makes the eyes study the quilt to sort of figure out what is going on.
I first put them on my design wall, playing with the order of the fabrics (there really is an order to them if you look closely).

After sewing the blocks together, I cut off the outside triangles to square the quilt. Now I have more scraps to sew together!! I added a small border around the blocks and finally had three ready to be quilted.

I put them side by side on my longarm machine and freemotioned quilted each of them separately. One had hearts all over it, another feathers meandering all around and the third had feathers following the design of the blocks.

I decided to machine stitch the binding on one of them and here is a little illustration. You sew the binding to the back of the quilt instead of the top. Press the binding flat from the back. Turn the quilt over and press the binding to the front of the quilt.

I use clips to hold the binding in place all the way around and then it is ready for the stitching. I use a decorative stitch on my sewing machine, sewing from the top of the quilt.

Here is the finished binding! Works very well!!

Here are a couple of the finished quilts, ready to be taken to the guild and delivered to Newton County Hospital for the tiny preemies. The quilts are 21" square. The parents are given the quilts when their babies go home, or if they do not make it, they still get to keep the tiny quilts.

This is one of the charity projects of the Cotton Boll Quilter's Guild in Covington, Georgia.