Handy Andy Crib Quilt

Handy Andy Crib Quilt

I had already made the baby a quilt. It was one I drafted before she was born, then finally completed it in November 2022 (picture of it here). It’s a bit of a beast, at 50×50″, and was done entirely with commercially dyed cotton. The idea was it’ll get a lot of use and I don’t want to worry too much about care and upkeep; if I want to throw it in the wash, then I will and hand washing be damned.

It has gotten a lot of use, and I love it. When she was nursing that’s what we’d wrap ourselves in in the morning while the house warmed up. More frequently now it gets thrown on the floor and used as a pseudo-playmat, or her current favourite thing to do, get on a sheepskin and pretend she’s sleeping under it. It’s a sturdy, well loved quilt that’s going to get many, many more years of love.

But, I did want to make her something for her crib specifically. I wanted something warm (wool batting, instead of cotton) and something more appropriately crib/kid bed sized. I also wanted to utilize my hand-dyed fabrics for this one. Since it won’t be subject to floor rolling and dog wrestling, I figured I could be slightly more precious.

She actually already had another quilt in her crib that I made, but it is a very light whole cloth quilt (similar to this one, although different colours). It’s great for summer, but not warm enough at all for winter. When I made a bunch of pillowcases in 2023 out of scraps I had, this one in particular struck me and I knew that was the next quilt to be made.

Cutting for HSTs
I had most of the colours already dyed that I wanted to use with this one; marigold for the yellow and two different tones of indigo for the blues. But the pink I did need to dye, so I used a weak madder bath at 25% WOF to create it. The marigold and madder were both created with a gallnut tannin as the base, and alum/soda ash as the mordant (which you can read more about how I do that here for those interested).

This quilt had the distinction of being my first on point quilt. I was emboldened thanks to Sara Larson Buscaglia’s very excellent book, Quilt Alchemy to attempt this. Also, I think for these blocks in particular, it’s so very pleasing to have them on point. I decided to go with snowball blocks for the two centre, to connect the Handy Andy blocks and give it all a little movement.

I also knew this one was going to be quite a bit warmer than the other two quilts. I was going to use not one, but two layers of wool batting to make this a warm, winter quilt. The bedrooms have a habit of getting a bit chillier than the rest of the house, and a nice, warm comforter-style quilt was the solution.

Bear with me now while I go into a bit of a diatribe. I suffered from telling myself that I was really bad at math for a long period in my life. Really from pre-teen to teenage years I was adamant, and that followed me into my 20s. Until I started to realize nobody is inherently bad at math. That’s a ridiculous myth we tell ourselves when we bomb because the school system doesn’t get people who know how to teach math to kids. So there’s a lot of lack of explanation as to why things are happening, which results in confusion for the student, which then results in them (generally) internalizing it and thinking they must be the problem.

I said this to myself for many, many years until I realized that the teachers I had were absolute shit, and didn’t know math themselves. What they did was teach from a guide, and anything that deviated from outside of that guide, they couldn’t answer, thus leaving students (me) confused.

One of the better matching examples, but they’re all just slightly off.

There is a reason why I’m saying this, and that is because I struggle with snowball block math. Something about it I still haven’t grasped yet, but I will. In fact, I make this declaration here and now, by the end of 2024 I will read all I can about snowball block math and practice the hell out of it to get it down.

That didn’t help me with this quilt though, so some are very slightly off. Honestly, I thought I had it, but when I sewed my blocks together… whoops. Obviously not because they don’t really match. Now, I could have ripped it all apart and redid the blocks, but I didn’t. On point quilts aren’t quite as easy to rip apart, and I was under a bit of a time constraint due to the weather and wanting to get this warmer quilt done. Plus, I don’t think the baby will mind, and we’re the only ones looking at it.

I’m still really, really happy with this top, and since I’m embracing the mess this year, it’s not that I’m happy with in spite of the imperfection. I’m happy with it because of imperfection.

I also took the opportunity to play around with both the binding and the quilting. I have a small collection of naturally dyed sashiko threads in my collection, and I wanted to use those, picking a different colour for abutting quilted lines. I ended up using two shades of marigold, a light madder, walnut, and a plain off-white sashiko thread. It’s a subtle thing you have to look for, especially since there is so much cush with the double-layer batting, but I absolutely love that it’s there.

I also wanted to play with a scrappy border, utilizing colours from the quilt itself. I am so happy with this binding. I’ve been pretty constrained with single colour binding with my quilts, but I’m definitely going to experiment and play more with multi-colour double fold bindings. I also cut the binding a bit thicker than my standard 2.5″, making it 3″. I wanted to account for the extra thickness of the batting, and while I likely could have gotten away with 2.75″, I’m glad I had the extra wiggle room.

It wasn’t all wine and roses with this thing though. The snowball blocks, yes are off, but they weren’t a pain per se. Getting the binding on? That was a pain. The thickness of the binding necessitated constant ripping out and re-doing, even on the victory lap of the second line of stitching on the machine. The walking foot didn’t help, and in fact, when I switched back to my 1/4″ standard quilting foot, that made the process easier. I was thinking of making a large queen size version for my bed with a double layer of batting, but getting the binding on has definitely made me re-think that.

Seriously, the binding took an obscene amount of time. In the end? Totally worth it, because this thing is exactly what I wanted: a warm, cushy winter quilt. Would I do it again? I’d really have to think about that knowing what’s coming down the pipe.

Different coloured sashiko thread for quilting.

Despite the pain with the binding, I’m so in love with this quilt. The baby loves it, it keeps her warm, and when she first saw it she was absolutely giddy. This might just be my favourite quilt of all time.