The Happy Birthday Quilt

I have seen some adorable birthday buntings out there and I wanted something similar to hang up for our family birthdays. Alan and I have our birthdays three days apart in the winter but Baby Boy's birthday will be early in the autumn. I like the idea of making birthdays special since I insist on celebrating my birthday no matter how old I get. I decided to use a wall hanging with a mini bunting for decoration instead of a full sized bunting. I used felt for the appliques and hand drew and cut out letters. Felt is stiff enough to not need fusible webbing and I'm pretty sure I couldn't have ironed it anyway. I pinned it down and machine sewed it in place. The background and boarders are cotton fabrics from my stash that were the closest match I had to the colors of the felt.

 I free handed the quilting around the letters, balloons, and mini bunting. The bunting isn't sewn down. I threaded the pennants onto a thin yarn that I knotted on the ends and sewed the knots into the side seams. I pinned the pennants down to quilt around them but let them hang free when hung up. I do fold the wall hanging very carefully for storage to not crease the pennants.

 I cut out pieces of felt into balloon shapes and pinned them down on the boarders as a template to quilt around so I could make sure the loops were symmetrical. I used a larger piece for the corners and center top and bottom and a smaller one for the rest of the boarder and just just moved them around as needed. I used pins to mark the center of where each balloon shape would be to keep the spacing even.

The finished quilt is 29 x 32 inches.

Next time: a cuddly stuffed wookie for baby.