The Tales of Peter Rabbit- Patchwork Ruffle Baby Quilt -

Hi Makers, it’s Sara Brown from @SaraBQuilts. While I have two handsome boys (ages 6 and 4)of my own, it has been a few years since I have been able to wrap them up in baby blankets. After playing with Riley Blake Design’s new The Tales of Peter Rabbit collection, I wish I could go back in time and make them sweet, little baby quilts with this adorable fabric line!

While all of the colors in this collection are beautiful, I chose to focus on just the blue and cream fabrics. Since the illustrations and details of the fabric stood out on their own, I decided to make a simple square patchwork quilt. I chose 4” finished squares and made the quilt 8 squares by 10 squares to be a total finished size of 32” x 40” which is the perfect baby quilt size in my opinion!

I loved pairing the Cream Veggies fabric with the Blue Peter Toss fabric and the Blue Gingham fabric with the Cream Text fabric. It was so fun cutting out the squares and seeing new illustrations, like the cabbage leaves and the potted flowers. This collection has excellent fussy cutting potential for all my fellow English paper piecing fans!

For the backing, I paired my quilt with Riley Blake Design’s coordinating basic Boy Blue Sparkle from the Sparklers collection. It is a subtle baby blue with pops of metallic gold that is a perfect match for The Tales of Peter Rabbit fabric!

I decided to really up the cuteness of this quilt by swapping out binding for a ruffle. I absolutely love how this turned out and want to try it out with more quilts! To achieve this look I started out by cutting 4.5” strips of the Blue Gingham fabric. I took the perimeter of my quilt (32” + 32” + 40” + 40”= 144”) and then multiplied that by 1.5 to get a good ruffle that wasn’t too dense. This made my ruffle strip 216” before ruffling. Next, I made the stitch length on my machine a 6 and made two lines of stitches an 1/8” and a 1/4” away from the raw edge. After that I carefully started gathering the fabric and making the ruffle. It takes time and patience, but it is worth it!

Once the ruffle was completed, it was time to put the quilt together. I spray basted the quilt top to the batting and made sure it was very secure. After doing that, I rounded the corners by tracing a cup along the edges. Then I took the ruffle and pinned it around the edge with the finished ruffle edge pointing inward away from the raw edge of the quilt. This took some time because I had to evenly spread the ruffle out and lengthen it as I went around the quilt top. If you do this at home, make sure to leave a lot of ruffle around the corners to avoid them stretching out and not looking ruffly! Finally, I placed the quilt backing right-side down so the right sides of the quilt and quilt backing were facing each other. I then sewed around the entire perimeter of the quilt, leaving a 6” gap so I could turn the quilt right-side out. After turning it out, I gave it a good press and sewed the opening shut.

I chose not to quilt the layers together, because everything felt secure and so soft. Thread ties, hand quilted “x’s”, or even big stitches around each square would be extra special! I can’t wait to gift this quilt to expecting parents someday. Until then, I will continue to admire its Peter Rabbit sweetness!