More Incubator Blankets

My quilting guild has selected incubator blankets as our special project this year, for the local children's hospital. They don't go on top of the preemie, but on the incubator itself, to both help insulate and keep the heat in, and to block some of the light for the little ones.

These are fun to do, and you don't realize how quickly something small (only 24 x 24) will work up. Here's the one I made from the pastel strip set you saw a couple of posts ago. I started it Superbowl Sunday, as part of Bargellobowl. This one's my favorite of the 5 incubator tops I've done so far. Guess I'm kinda traditional when it comes to baby blankets:


And then here's one I made Heartstrings style. I had a strip of muslin that wasn't big enough to cut regular size Heartstrings foundations from, but I was able to cut sixteen 6½ inch squares. Looking at it now, I wish I'd cut those initial red strips a bit smaller, think they were 2 inches, a little wide for the small block, but there was a lot of the hand dyed red I wanted to use.



And like everyone else says, no matter that I made 16 blocks for this, my bags of strings didn't get any smaller... :D

Big Jewel Boxes

I'm thinking of starting something that'll keep me occupied for a long time... a scrappy jewel box for my king size bed. I don't have a quilt for MY bed yet, lots of twin size and a couple of queen or double sized ones.

So I know I like the jewel box pattern, and I also like the idea of pieced borders that extend into the quilt, so I got to playing on my EQ. The middle in solid white looked too plain, especially for the big expanse of a king size. Here's the top three I came up with:


First, a small 9-jewel diamond shape made by substituting some blue for the white fabrics in the very center.


Above, a large center 25 jewel diamond surrounded by a thin blue trim that almost goes out to the edges...


And last, the smaller 9 jewel diamond middle surrounded by the thin blue trim.

I plan on doing the little squares both strip pieced (from 2 inch strips) and some leader-enders. I have a LOT of 4 inch squares I'd like to use up for this, so all those half square triangle 4-square jewel blocks will finish at six inches.

The hard part will be keeping the blue and white areas counted out, for whichever final design I decide on. Which design do YOU like better?

Bargellobowl Incubator Blankets

Here's what I worked on instead of watching the superbowl - Bargellobowl was much more my kind of fun! First the top I finished already, one in brights. Got your sunglasses on? Hopefully it will brighten up the preemie ward:


I've already made a backing of the bright fabrics for this one, it's a 27 inch square nine patch, using big squares. The incubator blankets have to finish at 24x24.

And here's the strip set of the more tame, pastel one I'm making - should finish it tonight:



I also added borders to the blue incubator blanket you saw earlier, and made a backing for that one.