babies and quilts

There's been a bit of drought of babies in my life the last few years, but suddenly there are beautiful babies appearing all over the place. Part of my motivation for learning to quilt was so that I could start making baby quilts.

My big girl has had a fantastic year in Grade 1, mostly due to her lovely teacher. So when Mrs C announced she was leaving at the end of the year to have a baby, I thought it was the perfect time for another baby quilt to be made. I secretly told the children in the class that I was making a rainbow quilt (with help from my girl) and took the squares of material in to show them while we made Mrs C wait outside the classroom. All the children managed to keep it a secret right up until we gave the teacher the quilt on Wednesday, although one little scallywag of a boy kept threatening to give the game away. Mrs C loved her quilt and here she is holding it up. I edited her out of the photo though for privacy reasons. (Not sure that she wants to appear in my blog!)

I was originally going to try and get the children to write their names on baking paper and trace them on to the quilt and embroider over them so that they would be part of the quilt making process. But time was running out so instead, I gave them all a square of white cardboard and asked them to draw a picture for Mrs C - maybe of themselves, Mrs C, her baby or a quilt. I was stunned at the beautiful artworks they produced. They really love this teacher and it showed in the effort they put in and all the loving messages and love hearts etc. Here are a few samples. We punched holes in the pictures and joined them into a little book with a piece of ribbon.

At the same time as this was all happening, the friends of the beautiful Jo were making a quilt to celebrate the impending home birth of her third baby. The amazing Melissa sewed all the hand made squares together into an absolute work of heart. (That was a typo but I think "work of heart" works just as well as "work of art"). Here's the link to the photos of the quilt on Melissa's website. A beautiful "blessing way" was also held to honour Jo and give her and her baby lots of love leading up to the birth. I had never heard of a blessing way before and I described it to Scott as sort of a hippie baby shower. As part of it, we all sat quietly and sewed little felt angels with crystal, embroidery etc to make a mobile for Jo's baby. Here's a photo of Jo with the mobile. Her little baby boy arrived safely at home last week and was safely caught by his Daddy, Simon while Hugo and Isobel watched in excitement. Jo is so clever that she gave birth to Otto in less time than it takes to bake a cake and before her midwives arrived.

The next baby to arrive is my brother's and his new wife's baby boy in April. My family are over the moon and my sister and I are going to make a really special baby quilt together. His wife is East Timorese so we think we might buy some beautiful colourful Bali pop material to remind him of his part of the world. My sister and I haven't met our new sister-in-law yet so we are impatiently waiting for her to arrive in Australia on Christmas Eve.