nani iro baby improv quilt

What started out as a little experiment happily turned into a favorite new little quilt! I wanted to use some lovely Nani Iro double gauze fabrics, and decided to challenge myself to use up some Nani Iro scraps left over from a couple clothing projects – the burgundy floral and the pink gingham.

I paired those two prints with some aqua voile left over from another shirt I had made and added in a few other aqua solids in order to have enough for the background.

I turned to my Quilts of Gee’s Bend book for some inspiration and came across a wonderful quilt by Annie Mae Young (you can see a photo of it in my previous post about this quilt).

As I mentioned in that post, I even decided to hand quilt it – a first for me! I opted for a simple solid backing in Cotton Couture Stone, and used Quilter’s Dream Request batting (their lowest loft, and quite nice for hand quilting!). I drew out a simple crosshatch pattern and spent several evenings on the couch hand quilting. I’m certainly a novice in that area, so don’t look too closely at those stitches!, but I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed spending the time sewing this one by hand. And I do love how those stitches look! I used an aqua pearl cotton, which was part of an Anna Maria Horner box collection.

(Max tested it out for me, but really it’s destined for the baby!)

I was a bit apprehensive about throwing it in the wash, but it came out with all the stitching still in place (yay!), and it’s truly the softest quilt I’ve ever made. The double gauze, voile, lightweight batting, and hand stitching makes a great combo!