Baby Rugby Quilt

My cousin Alison and her husband welcomed their first little one around midnight on Tuesday. They named him Dane Alan and is he ever a BIG boy! I decided last night, since I will be missing the baby shower next weekend {we're camping!} that I would like to put together something handmade. I was inspired by Cristin's straight-lines baby quilt, but as I got into the process...I sort of thought I goofed. I figured I didn't have enough of the navy blue fabric to do the even strips like the original, so I blazed my own trail and am quite happy with the results! {Turns out I would have, if I had bothered to measure...but no matter, I like what I ended up with.} The stripes struck me as rather rugby-ish, hence the post title.

I am madly in love with this fabric:

I bought it with my nephew in mind, but I still haven't finished {cough, cough...started} his robot/space quilt. So, little Dane, you get it instead! I think it looks preppy yet sweet. The polka dots are a whimsical addition, too, yes?


I cut my three focus fabrics into eight 5" squares each, for a total of 24 squares. After figuring out the arrangement I sewed three rows of 8, making sure none of the squares happened to fall in line with another of its kind. Then came the departure from Cristin's quilt. Instead of doing symmetrical rows, I decided to cut a few different widths. My widest is 10.5", then 9",6.5", and 3" for the smallest, all cut to the length of the pieced 5" squares. I mixed up the strips, too, so I wouldn't wind up with graduated stripes.


I have a navy blue and white striped fabric for the back and binding {my first attempt at doing a "barbershop pole" style}, and I plan to quilt in straight lines as a nod to my quilt's inspiration. I fell asleep thinking about the quilting lines and woke up with a sore shoulder! Must've been quilting in my sleep... I'd like to quilt white lines above and below each pieced stripe, about the width of my walking foot. Then, navy blue evenly spaced lines horizontally for the remainder of the quilt. I'm hoping I won't have to do any vertical quilting!

Oh! Pre-quilted, this blanket measures 35.5"x40.5" and I think that's a pretty good size for such a "little" guy {Dane weighed in at almost 10 pounds!}