Baby Boy Clothes Quilt Part 1

I took a break from my Cricut for the last few days so that I could work on my son's baby clothes quilt. I put a pretty good dent in it this weekend.

I had already sorted out his clothes and cut each one apart removing seams and collars to make it easier to make blocks. This week I cut 209 4-1/2" squares. I used this size because I have a plastic block that makes it so much easier. My hands were a little sore after all that! My basic supplies:

After all the squares were cut I needed to cut the fusible interfacing for the backs to stabilize the stretch, thin material. I purchased 7 yards of Pellon SF101 from my local quilt store.

This fusible interfacing is applied using a LOT of steam. I placed the Pellon on the wrong side of the fabric and then applied a damp press cloth. The iron was set at highest heat and I pressed each part of the block for about 10 seconds. I also kept my iron filled with water to create more steam.

The cutting and steaming took me two nights to finish. My hands were pretty sore from all the cutting and then the steam wrinkled them all up.

Piles of Pellon and fabric squares.

After ironing Pellon to fabric. This is only a third of all my squares.

Yesterday I laid out all of the squares on our bed. I wasn't really picky I just wanted the colors to go diagonally across the quilt and not just have a random order. I didn't realize what I was getting into laying them all out. I didn't want to lose my order so I had to sew all of the strips together that night so that we could use our bed. My bed is on the opposite side of the house from the sewing table so it was a lot of walking back and forth, but I got them pieced together. Today I will finish ironing the seams and sew the strips together.

I did 19 squares by 11 squares. I will also add a 1-1/2 and 5-1/2 border all the way around. My size should turn out to be 58" x 90". The backing I want to use is 60" wide so I wanted to keep it under that, although it will be close with no wiggle room.