Baby Quilt Friday!: Ten Little Piggies

It's been just over a year since my book (but actually, it's a box) The Little Box of Baby Quilts was published. And almost a year since I quit my day job. Geezo peety, time flies. With children and pregnancy and weaning myself from work life to stay-at-home life, I still haven't gotten around to doing what has been a longtime goal of mine--to post a bit about each quilt in the "little box." Reaching that goal begins today!

I'm setting aside time during the next 20 Fridays to blog about each baby quilt from the "little box" (grouped into a new blog category called Quilts from the Little Box). Each girl will get her own special day. Today, fittingly, is "Ten Little Piggies" day--the first quilt I designed for this collection. Here she is:

From The Little Box of Baby Quilts, copyright 2006 Jenny Wilding Cardon/
That Patchwork Place. Machine quilted by Cheryl Brown.
Nine piggies on the front. Piggy ten is on the back.

Gosh darn it. I do think she's cute.

This is the quilt that launched the whole idea of the "little box." At the time I started sketching out the design, Jack was just about ready to toddle. And I was completely wrapped up in the world of babes. I hadn't touched my sewing machine since Jack had been born, and I missed it. So with baby on the brain--and Jack as my muse--I started sketching, then sewing, whenever I had a few quiet moments.

(Oh, I thought those quiet moments were few and far between. They're even fewer and farther between now. I had NO idea how quiet I had it back then. Heaving sigh.)

Jack and I were inseparable--pretty much still are--and he got to know the local quilt shops very well. It was Jack who chose the hot-pink fuzzy fabric in the quilt above. He couldn't stop touching it, with his hands and his face, at the shop. So I brought some of the fuzzy stuff home to experiment. Ten Little Piggies is the result. The quilt is made with simple machine piecing, a little hand applique, and a little perle-cotton embroidery.

After the quilt returned from her trunk-show tour of quilt shops, I sent her to her final home--with my niece in southern Utah. Janessa likes to play with the project cards in the "little box," and her parents say she points out this quilt as her favorite every time. So now it's hers. I hope it will be well loved--enough to be in need of repair--the next time we visit.

You can view more quilts from the "little box" here, and a video about it here.

Next Friday comes another fuzzy one, called "Fuzzy Wuzzy Hearts." Lots of fuzzy-wuzzy quilts in this collection. Hope to see you back here next Friday!