Tumbling Teddy Bears -- Latest Baby Quilt

Tumbling Teddy Bears 2011

Tumbling This Way

When I started at my present company,  I made a baby quilt for one of my new co-workers. I thought that I would make one for every baby born to someone on my floor. My mistake was that I did not take into account the average age of the employees on my floor -- late 20s to early 30s -- prime baby making years!

So in the last couple of years I have made 9 baby quilts for co-worker babies. I did this pattern for someone a couple of years ago and it was really easy and fun to make. So since that person has since left the company, I decided to make this one for another company baby.

The first teddy bear quilt I made, Dancing Bears, was for a girl. Some of the bears on that quilt were girl bears wearing dresses and some were boy bears wearing pants. This baby was a boy and all the bears are wearing pants.

Tumbling That Way

I have at least one more baby quilt to make this year for a colleague who is due in October. She wants to be surprised so I will have to come up with a quilt that is good either way.

My favorite technique for making quick baby quilts is to Google "coloring pages" and look for a simple animal or baby toy motif as a pattern. I then use fusible paper to appliqué the motif -- here the teddy bear -- to the background fabric. The most time is spent actually sewing around each object with a blanket stitch. No, I don't do it by hand anymore, I use my Bernina! It does a much neater job than I can and is way faster.

My sister, Brenda, then machine quilts the finished top with her long arm quilting machine. I have hand quilted before, but again, her long arm is much faster! I have too many babies to make quilts for than I have spare time.