A Quilt for Eloise

I started this project a long time ago, but morning sickness, exhaustion from pregnancy, and life in general prevented me from finishing it. The project sat in my closet as a lonely quilt top for a good six months. When I heard the news of our friend Linnaea's new baby girl, Eloise, I pulled it out of that "to do" pile. I tried to make it as gender neutral as possible, which becomes more complicated when you stray from the traditional yellow/green combo. The big question was whether I should include blue? It was a tough decision, but ultimately I'm very pleased. This quilt also marks the first time that I used a dark color as the background. I played around with a few different colors, but decided that the slate fabric compliments the color palate much better than plain white sashing -- also, white and babies usually don't mix. 

Given that I was recovering from birth and settling into new parenthood, my mom was gracious enough to offer to finish it while she was in town. She finished the back, quilted the layers, and sewed on the binding. I have to say it's kind of nice having more than one person involved in a baby quilt's creation. Just that much more love has gone into the gift. While Miles was napping on Monday, I finally got a clear window of time to take it over to the post office and send it down to Santa Cruz. The quilt was packed with entire package of newborn sized diapers that Miles, my jumbo baby, outgrew at two weeks old. Eloise was just shy of seven pounds at birth, so I'm thinking they'll be useful for a while.

Welcome to the world, Eloise!