My Own Kids' Baby Blankets

I want to share the quilts I made several years ago for my own sweet babies. My son turned 12 this spring and my daughter turns 9 next week. Where do the years go?

I was a very new quilter when I was pregnant with my son. Before I was pregnant, I tried to make a baby quilt for a nephew who is just a bit older than my son, but that quilt was a total disaster and I never finished it. I learned that I really need to work from a pattern with nice, clear instructions. That nephew received a sewn fleece blanket and a hooded bath towel instead of a quilt.


The pattern was in the book Quilts for Baby by Ursula Reikes. This is a great book and it is still widely available. I saw it the other day at my JoAnns. My son hid from the ultrasound camera so I had to make a gender neutral quilt for him. I hand quilted it. I always intended to quilt the border with some sweet handprint outlines, but I never got around to it and at this point, it does not matter. When he outgrew the quilt, I let my little daughter use it with her teddy bears. My son forgot about it until he saw it our baby photo albums and I told him the sweet story of how I was so excited to have a baby and I couldn't wait to make something special to wrap him up in. He reclaimed it from his sister and I noticed that the quilt was showing up in various places in his room and in his play. It has long since returned to the closet. Seeing it brings back sweet memories of new parenthood.

I have always had a harder time crafting things for boys and men, so just in case I had a baby girl, I made this flannel receiving blanket. Those look like little colorful bunnies, but they are really little stylized flowers.

This was a pattern in a book or magazine I had at the time, but I forget which one. I used fuseable webbing to fuse the shapes down onto cotton flannel, and then I stitched around them with a blind hem stitch using the old sewing machine my grandma gave me. It is two layers of cotton flannel with a homemade double fold binding. I made it while I was dreaming about motherhood, and I didn't use it until my daughter was born.

This animal print blanket was one of the kid's favorites. I found that adorable print at the fabric store. It is backed in flannel and has a fluffy poly batting inside. I wish I knew what brand that batting is, because there is no bearding on that blanket at all. I hate the way poly batting beards...

I cut out some of the animal motifs and stitched them onto some baby clothes that became favorite shirts for our son. We particularly liked the jumping frog and we called our darling son "Froggy Man" when he wore it. I did several other fabric-flannel receiving blankets and another blanket like this one with cars and trucks all over it, but I just couldn't keep everything and those went away to a new home on a charity truck.

There is another gender-neutral quilt I made for my daughter when I didn't know if she would be a boy or a girl, but it is probably down in the basement and I don't want to go down there and face the epic-junk-room-mess, I'd rather be up here getting nostalgic with you.

When I had a new baby girl to craft for, I couldn't wait to sew up this pattern which was in one of my Quiltmaker magazines. I could use various colorful prints I'd collected and I liked the restful blue background. I used these leafy-viney prints to make some little accessories and curtains for her baby bedroom in our first house.

I love this quilt, but it isn't my daughter's favorite. It simply isn't pink and girly or cute enough for her. She prefers the one that is down in the basement, because it has a fun jungle theme.

These babies are growing up! My son is at sleep-away Boy Scout camp this week and my daughter is spending a week away from us alone with her Nana later this summer. Here they are on a weekend trip we took recently to the Wisconsin Dells: