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I want to make a keepsake quilt from my favorite among Grace’s baby clothes. With our new baby girl expected in early January, I wanted to get the quilt finished as soon as possible.

I started by gathering and sorting the baby clothes in order to find the ones that I really had an emotional connection to. Next, I found inspiration by looking at other baby clothes quilts online.

How to Make a Keepsake Quilt from Baby Clothes

Step Three: Design the Baby Clothes Quilt

Given the volume of clothes I had in a variety of sizes, I decided to make something similar to this one.

It has everything I liked – a small border between the clothes squares, big squares to maximize precious outfits, small squares to minimize waste, and a coordinating border around the whole thing.

Decide on a Size for the Baby Clothes Quilt

Grace’s day bed is a 5-in-1 that turns into a full-size bed when she’s ready for that. After finding a helpful tutorial at Craftastical, I realized that I had enough baby clothes to make a queen-sized quilt. I thought about sticking with a full-size one, but the dimensions for the queen size worked out better given my design for the inner part of the quilt.

Design the Quilt Pattern

Here’s what I started with -

For that to work, I’d need the center to be 7 squares by 8 squares, a total of 56 8-inch squares, each bordered by a 2-inch strip of solid material. The patchwork border would need to have 76 4-inch squares, each bordered by a 2-inch strip of solid material.

Around the whole quilt will be a 1-inch binding, but I didn’t figure that or the quilt backing in the calculations above. Let’s do one thing at a time, okay?

According to my calculations, the finished quilt will be 90″x100″, just a bit bigger than a queen-sized bedspread.

This is going to be a big job. I’m a little concerned about that, but working on one step at a time should make it doable.

I hope.

Oh, and I decided to add a pillow sham. It will require 4 2-inch squares and 24 4-inch squares.

I’m insane.

Step Four is to cut the outfits into appropriately sized squares. More on that next week.

Happily submitted to Transformation Thursday, Show Off Your Stuff, Get Your Craft On Thursdays, I’m Lovin’ It Fridays,  Just Something I Whipped Up, Motivate Me Monday,  Makes My Monday, Sumo’s Sweet Stuff, Making the World Cuter Mondays, Made By You Mondays,  Get Your Craft On Mondays, Talented Tuesday, Toot Your Horn Tuesday, and Show & Tell

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Tagged as: baby clothes, baby clothes quilt, baby quilt, Bedding, keepsake quilt, keepsake quilting, patchwork, quilt