1001 Baby Nights

Another Finish for you to see!! This one is an Original Design by me. This is a Baby Quilt made for my cousins who are Parents-To-Be, the baby girl is due in July and the baby shower was mid-May. This was finished along with Wild Firelight, so it didn’t get blogged about until now, as life was crazy with deadlines. Several more quilts are in the works, as well.

This fabric was actually purchased over 8 years ago, before my cousin and his wife were even engaged, but this adorable 1001 Arabian Nights inspired fabric was just something I had to put away for them in case they decided to have children….so here we are, eight years later, and this fabric was exactly what they got.

When I purchased it, it was just a bundle of nine fat quarters, so I thought I’d just add more fabric to it, and I’d be good….fast forward to designing this, I decided I didn’t want to actually add any additional fabric, so I didn’t, and got VERY creative using every bit of fabric in this top. There was almost no usable scraps by the time I finished the top.

I had also talked to the Momma-to-Be and found out that they were doing elephants for the baby’s room, so I wanted to add in elephants. Luckily, elephants totally go with 1001 Arabian Nights, so I found a beautiful Cuddle Minky with elephants on it and couldn’t be more thrilled. Only trouble? Minky is 100% polyester and doesn’t shrink…..the rest of the quilt is cotton and definitely will shrink. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem because I’m a pre-washer, but these were fat quarters, and you don’t really pre-wash pre-cuts because they get weird. Solution? I washed the fat quarters in the sink in the hottest water I could stand, and put them into the hottest dryer I could to force shrink them in advance, this way there’d be no bizarre shrink distortions happening later on. (and it totally worked!)

Here’s some more pictures of the finished quilt!

With permission, I’m posting some images of my Cousin-in-law, Tanu, opening the Quilt with her lovely mother, Meena. You can see the cute Minky elephant fabric here, too!

Apparently, I need to show you more photos, so here’s one more for you! (totally taken in a hotel….)

Here’s the details on 1001 Baby Nights

Title: 1001 Baby Nights
Pattern:  Original Design by Danika Norey McCann
Size: Baby/Crib, finished ~44″ x 56″
Fabric: 1001 Peeps by Lizzie House for Andover fabrics, purchased at the Vermont Quilt Festival almost a decade ago
Piecing: Machine stitched on Mavis, the Bernina 770QE, with Connecting Threads Essential 50 weight, 100% Cotton, in White
Cutting: all by hand
Quilting: Tied with multiple colors of Takhi Cotton Classic, 100% cotton yarn purchased at Cornwall Yarn Shop
Backing: “Mr. Sandman” in Shell by Shannon Fabrics Sweet Melody Minky Cuddle, 60″ fabric purchased from Big Sky Quilts in Great Falls, Montana (their website is down at the time of writing this, so I can’t link to it)
Label: none….baby quilt (no label until the baby arrives!)
Batting: Warm and Natural, the Warm Company
Finished Date: May 2022
Total Hours: 38 hours