One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. A Fast and Fishy Baby Quilt.

Our friend The Hiker was about to leave town to spend a couple months on the Appalachian Trail.  We met him and his soon to be Trail-Widow for a send-off drink the other night.

"Why didn't you name your blog, EatBikeSleepRepeat?" asked The Hiker.  "It always seems to be about food."

It does?  

I can change that.

As a matter of fact I am way ahead of you, Mr. Hiker.  I was already planning to throw everyone off this week with some show and tell. 

Bike.  Eat.  Yes of course.  Every day!

But, it's also nice to have something that puts you to Sleep. 

I have just the blog post for that.

The Chick and I were invited to a baby shower last month.  It was fun.  I have never had fun at a baby shower before so this one wasn't just a surprise for the guest of honor. 

Scout's daughters, Sea and Breeze, have been friends of the Chick since they were all in preschool.  For Sea, the glowing mother-to-be, the gift needed to be special.  From the heart.  And loosely themed on the ocean, for which she is named.


The Chick searched the Orlando bookstores for me, while I conducted my own search here.  Not one copy of Dr Suess's "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" anywhere.  Too bad.  It's an old favorite, and I would have loved to pass on it's magic cadence of fishy rhyming to the little newcomer.


What to do when words are not an option?


Go for the visual.


First, a sketch.  It doesn't need to be fancy.  Actually, it's better if it isn't.

Then, head to the fabric stash for auditions. 


The urge to cut up perfectly good pieces of cloth and sew them back together again is a hereditary addiction.  I totally blame my grandmother, mother, sister, and aunts.  (And Boutique 4 Quilters, the local dealer in my drug of choice, cotton batiks.)

I love batiks, fabrics that have a bit of glow.  It's an elusive quality, but you know it when you see it.  Kind of like Sea right now, the proverbial glowing mom-to-be.  You can't quite describe it, but it's there for everyone to see.

The fabric audition is the most important part of any quilt-to-be.  The cleverest design can not save a quilt if you don't love the colors. 


So, play with the fabrics.  Put them all out there.  Stack them together.  Separate them by color.  I often arrange light to dark within each color.  Narrow down color choices.  Subtract what doesn't work. 

Sometimes the fabrics live on the dining room table for awhile.  Walking by, you may catch a combination out of the corner of your eye that you like (or hate).  Play with the stack until it's right.


This time though, I don't have the luxury of a lengthy audition process.  The shower is only one week away!


When a thought process is a luxury, don't use one.  

Go on instinct.  Contrast.  A dark combination of warm reds within an expanse of cool blue-greens should do it.  Squares and straight lines governed by curves.
 
From here on it's about the basics; a little craftsmanship, a lot of patience.

I usually don't cut each and every square individually.  It's a lot faster to sew long strips together, cut the strips crosswise, reverse, and re-sew.  But this time I decided I wanted the look to be truly random. 

Once the palette of reds was decided upon, I simply picked them up in any old order and constructed a fabric panel destined to become the Red Fish.  And then a similar one of long strips for the Blue Fish.

Once both panels are ready, stack them, each right side up, with the brightest on top. 

It really helps to trim the  outside edges to the same size as well, something I neglected.  That's OK, this is something I have neglected before.  As long as close attention is paid when pinning, the outside edges can be trimmed later.

If you are good at freehand, get out the Olfa cutter and go.  I need a little guidance so I raid my hash-stash for a bright yellow piece of chalk and draw the fish to scale.  (Ha-ha, scale, get it?)  

I have so much trouble with getting the fish to look right, I resort to drawing a grid over my original sketch and use the red squares of fabric correspondingly. 

Chalk wipes off time after time, which can be very handy.

Once the design is sketched, THEN  get out the Olfa and go.

Now you have two fish: one red, one blue, and contrasting borders for each. 

So, rearrange the pieces, sew up the curves and you're ready to make the quilt sandwich.

Oh well, maybe not quite so easy as that.  But pretty easy just the same. 

Here's where the patience comes in. 


Don't put the chalk away. 

Curves are trouble if the fabrics migrate or stretch, and they will if you don't use pins. 


A lot of pins. 

So retrieve the chalk from wherever it rolled to last, and mark and pin the contrasting right sides together. 


Pin every inch.  Literally.  Trust me on this.  Patience.  It's way easier than locating the seam ripper and taking every stitch out of stretchy, bias cut fabric.

Mark corresponding edges.

Pin right sides together, mark to mark.

Easy does it.

Press the seam and move on to the next one.

No worries about the chalk.  It wipes off, remember?

Two panels, ready for the next step.

From here the quilt can go one of two ways.


Either sew both panels together as one top for an extra large crib quilt, or put them back to back, making a smaller, reversible quilt.


I choose reversible.  Side one, the Red Fish.  Side two, the Blue Fish.


Now I trim the outside edges.  It really doesn't matter what the measurements end up as long as they are both the same, and both reasonably rectangular.  What does matter is that the perimeters match.  And that you have left room for binding the edge without covering the pointy end of the fish's nose - or tail.


I set my machine up for quilting.  My little entry-level Bernina is pretty much a straight line kind of gal.  ("Entry-level", as we say in the bike biz, means the cheapest version a company makes.)  There is no stitch regulator.  I can do straight lines with the walking foot.  That's about it. 


To be really fancy, and if the quilt is small enough, it can be manipulated into quilting long slow curves. 


Yes.  Perfect for a watery look with a fish on each side.

Red Fish

Blue Fish

Cat Fish?

Done!


And Pepper-approved. 


Just in time, too.