I have had this silly twin-sized ikea duvet cover since college. It has an allover vegetable print, and no doubt, it was made for a child - but 19 year old me saw it and could not resist. Sometime that same year, a stray jacket thrown onto the bed left its mark - a forgotten pen had come apart in one of the pockets and it bled through the sheet.

I’ve held onto this sheet, determined to make it into something(s), so when I found out that a close friend of Josh’s was having a baby, I knew what to do. I pulled out a pillowcase that my friend Aaron Sanders Head dyed with indigo and I starting patchworking these former bedsheets together.

My “baby sized quilt measurement” search was inconclusive, so I went with a size that seemed semi-reasonable based on my research, 40in x 40in. I cut (ripped) pieces of the duvet and pillowcase into 11in strips, thinking I’d piece together vertical long strips first (about 4 of them), and then sew them together to form the patchwork top. I pieced together scraps of cotton batting to make enough for the quilt, a process that is really quite magical to me. Just gently press the edges of the batting together (no overlap) and zigzag stitch it down. The pieces seem to melt together and the whole process is very forgiving. I made the backing piece out of the duvet, just a simple big piece of that fabric, made my quilt sandwich, basted it together with pins, and set about handstitching horizontal lines in white sashiko thread.

After a nice little text exchange back and forth with my pals Grace & Maya, I decided to round the corners of the quilt (and not deal with mitered corners), and bind it with a piece of precious linen I’ve been hanging onto since my employee discount days at a fancy fabric store.

These were helpful tutorials I used for the various parts of the quilt-making:

Quilt tutorial from Farm & Folk (specifically the ‘quilt sandwich’ part)

Making Bias Binding from All Well Workshop

Attaching Binding to the Quilt from Heirloom Creations

I think this is the first quilt I have really properly made from start to finish - the others I’ve worked on in my life have either become garments in the end, or I had no idea what I was doing when I pieced them or tried to put them together. I finished the quilt with a little inscription - the baby’s name and birthdate, as well as my initials. We sent it off in the post today, a hopeful gesture of connection with this newborn until we can safely meet.