Bowtie Baby Quilt Tutorial

It's Spring and there are babies being born soon! My husband asked me if I would make a little baby quilt for a gal that waits his table at a local diner. He gets together once a month with a group of guys from our old ward and they all meet for breakfast. They are a rowdy bunch of old military guys and this little waitress puts up with their antics every month. Her little baby boy is due next month and we are all very happy for her.

I asked my husband what were her nursery colors and he told me blue and gray and white...so digging through my stash, I came up with some fabrics for this little quilt...you won't need much if you want to make one like it. Your bowties can be any color and you can make the quilt as large or as small as you wish, it doesn't have to be for a baby...it's a basic bowtie block, here's how you make it.

Quilt finishes at 32" x 36".

For this quilt, I picked 3 fabrics for the bowties and used my favorite Kona Cotton White for the background.  You see four bowtie fabrics in the photo because I cut enough to make another quilt and packaged that in a ziplock for another time.

From your bowtie fabric: Blue, Gray and Print

 Cut: 14 - 2.5" squares of EACH COLOR

 Cut: 14 - 1.5" squares of EACH COLOR

From your background fabric: Kona White

Cut:  42 - 2.5" squares

Cut:  21 - 4.5" squares

For your borders:

Border #1 Cut 4 strips - 2.5" x WOF (width of fabric) (I used Kona White)

Border #2 Cut 4 strips - 2.5" x WOF (I used old striped shirting that I had to piece together)

Binding:

Cut 4 strips - 2.5" x WOF (I used the blue dot.

LETS GET STARTED!

To make this go fast, chain piece each step. Stack your 1.5" pieces on one side and your 2.5" background pieces on the other. Fold your 1.5" square in half on the diagonal and finger press as shown. This will become your stitch line. Now if this is too hard for you to do or to see, you can draw a diagonal line.

Place your little 1.5" square in the upper right corner of your 2.5" square. Pin if you feel that you need to...but you should be able to carefully place this under your machine and stitch on the diagonal line as shown.

Chain piece these until you have stitched all of them. Clip them apart and take them to your cutting mat.

Measuring 1/4" past your stitch line, trim off the excess, as shown below.

I like to finger press my seams open before I press them, this helps to insure that you have your seams all the way open. Press all of your squares, pressing your seams to the dark fabric, as shown below.

Lay out your bowtie block as shown below, ready to stitch. To chain piece these, lay all of your blocks out, one on top of the next, in the proper layout, then you can just grab and stitch. This goes really fast. You are basically just stitching a four patch. You will get in trouble if you turn your pieces, this is why I suggest you lay out your blocks next to your machine. Your Layout should look exactly as shown below.

Run them all through and press to the dark fabric. Again stack your fabric as shown below, so your block makes sense. Matching your center seams, stitch all your blocks together.

Press your seam open on the finished block, to eliminate bulk.

You should have a total of 21 bowtie blocks when you finish. Aren't they cute and wasn't that fun?

Now lay them out in a manner pleasing to you, alternating with the solid 4.5" background fabric squares. You will have 6 squares across and 7 squares down. Once you have stitched your rows together, start adding border #1 and then add border #2. Quilt as desired and you are ready to bind.

For this quilt, I did a simple stitch in the ditch around the bowties and a diagonal across the open squares. You don't have to have a longarm to do this, you can easily quilt this little quilt on your standard sewing machine. Off the longarm, with my husband holding it up, it's ready for binding now.

 For the binding, I selected the blue dot fabric that I used in some of the bowties.

Quilt finishes at 32" x 36" all ready for a new baby!

Update to the story...John and his boys met at the diner yesterday and he gave the quilt to their waitress. Watch this little video to see her reaction when she opens her present. We pranked her by wrapping it up to look like a gift for a girl. She told them she was having a boy. So fun and so sweet. First baby.