Baby quilt question

[Betty J.]

I am making a baby quilt for a newborn boy. I have minky for the back and batik for the front. Do I need batting with the minky? Also where can I find ideas for an applique design? I can do his name but wanted to do a simple applique design. I am thinking an airplane would be easy. I'm looking for simple ideas for a boy. Things you may have seen before. Thanks,

[Nancy R.]

Hi Jan -

The batting is optional. The minky will be enough to keep the baby warm and to give the quilt that cuddly feel, but batting is a nice addition. I've used batting for mine. There is some worry about making baby quilts too warm, but I leave that decision up to the parents. They can decide if the quilt will wrap the baby or if it will be a floor covering for the baby to play on.

Coloring books are a good place to look for applique ideas.

Nancy

[Betty J.]

Dover Publications has a lot of really great coloring books that you can use.

http://store.doverpublications.com/ and then they have downloadable designs here: http://www.doverpictura.com/

[Betty J.]

Thanks, Nancy and Betty Jo. I will use batting and will check out the dover site.

[Betty J.]

The dover site is fab! Thanks Betty Jo

[Betty J.]

You're welcome. I have a large collection of Dover publications. They make the copyright/royalty issue simple for people to use.

[Betty J.]

i found a link to making minky baby blankets. They are not quilts but she does have information on working with minky that has born true in my experiments with making minky backed bibs. The link is http://www.cornerhouseblog.com/2011/...-want-one.html.

If I do do a quilt rather than a blanket, I found what batting they used at my LQS. It's a thin polyester. That would work better than warm and natural which created a stiff bib in my trial run.

I got good results for applique designs by google imaging "childish airplane" or "Childish spaceship".

The pearls I found are: Minky doesn't stay nice and soft in the dryer. It is easiest when bound rather than sewn right sides togetger along the edges and turned inside out. Serging it works nicely if you have one. I don't. Minky comes 60 wide so you can get two 30 inch blankets out of approx. one yard. Now to find babies to give my minky to. I have one friend with a newborn. And she now has a nice bib for him from one fat quarter. The minky on the back makes it really nice. Jan