Baby’s First Year Clothing Quilt Keepsake

After I had my third daughter I knew she was going to be my last and I wanted to really make something memorable. So, I decided to save all her clothes from her first year to make her a baby’s first year clothing quilt keepsake. Yes, you read that right. All her baby clothes from birth to one year!

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Sewing and crocheting are my hobby. I wanted to make her quilt to be a keepsake and something that will be saved and passed on down through the generations. I really love how the quilt turned out. However, This was a challenge for me. Never had made a quilt before. I self taught myself every step of the way. Over coming that and the results are something that will last a lifetime. The process was long. Taking a few hours here and there to finish it. But of course there was no rush, I’m just glad it got done. I store it in her room either displayed on her crib or hanging over the rocking chair.

Let me show you how I created her first year quilt keepsake.

First of all, from the start I will walk you through how I created baby’s first year clothing keepsake quilt. I saved all the clothes in a box in the closet till it was time to start working on it.

Cutting

As you can see the was box full of clothes that I had saved for this keepsake quilt. Using my cutting board from my craft room with my cutting wheel tool.

Starting with the onesies and cutting them into perfect 6 inch by 6 inch squares. By using the cutting mat and the ruler I was able to square up the pieces nicely. As a result they did become a bit smaller on the finished quilt due to the 1/4 inch seam allowance.

This cutting mat will be your best friend for this project. You have to cut so much that you need something sturdy to cut on. Also, the measurements on it make sure your squares are definitely squared up.

There had to be lots of cutting to be done. This took some time to make sure that they all squared up. I felt like I was cutting squares for days.

Theses are the scissors I like to use.

For this quilt the rotary wheel cutter is a game changer. It cuts faster and more precise because the fabric is laying down on the mat.

Iron

In the end there was a total of 250 squares to work with. I did find that with the baby clothes that the baby pants were to small to get a 6 inch square out of. So, only using onesies, shirts, sleepers, jackets, one piece suits, swaddles and a few small blankets. I also omitted a few fluffy jackets and sweatshirts as I thought they were too thick. Wanting to keep a consistent look of all the squares being the same texture. The squares were pressed with an iron making sure they were flat. This is a important step to prepare for the pinning and sewing.

I like to use this iron when quilting.

Layout

This is the start of the lay out to make a pattern and make sure that two like colored squares didn’t end up together. It was so fun to start seeing the quilt actually come together.

The finished layout of baby’s first year clothing quilt keepsake. Just laid out on my dining room floor to see how it would look all together. After it was laid out, I collected all the squares and kept them organized in the row formation I wanted to keep. Piling them up next to the sewing machine getting ready to be sewn together.

Sewing

I collected all the squares up and started to sew them all into rows. By putting the right sides together, start sewing with a 1/4 inch seam allowance. This created the row foundation.

This is my favorite sewing machine. It’s simple but has some little extras and gets the job done.

After I had all the squares sewed together in rows then I started to sew the rows together to start and form the top layer of the baby’s quilt. Again, using a 1/4 inch seam allowance I sewing the rows together having right sides face each other while sewing. This part was a little tricky. There were seams from the top and bottom rows that needed to be lined up so all the lines were straight on the front of the baby’s quilt. By folding and pinning the seams together and pressing with the iron, it was better achieved result to line everything up.

All the squares sewed together, getting ready for the next step.

Deciding on using a flannel backing. I picked out a light pink color. I also used an all cotton batting in the middle. This stage right now is a quilt sandwich. A quilt sandwich is just a term used when you place the top quilt, batting in the middle and back piece all together. I taped the layers down to make sure everything lined up. Then started to pin all of it together with lots of pins! That was a big quilt.

This is the batting I used

and these are my favorite pins to use while quilting.

Quilting

This was the interesting part. Fitting this giant quilt through my sewing machine and trying not to get poked by pins. I used a zig zag stitch to go over all the seams of the squares from top to bottom and side to side.

In addition, after I quilted all the layers together on the quilt I took some of the flannel and made a binding to finish off the edge. The first time around on the top I used the sewing machine because the binding was going to get flipped over, you wouldn’t be able to see the stitches.

Finishing

On the back of the baby’s keepsake quilt I hand sewed to finish off the binding carefully to try to hide the stitches to keep it neat and clean-looking. Therefore, that took a while since the final quilt was quite large.

Ta Da!

And here it is all done ! A final quilt for my baby to keep and cherish for years to come. As a result, I’m really thrilled that this quilt will be something that my daughter will have to look back on and know that I made it for her.