When I heard my friends were expecting their first child I knew I wanted to make them a quilt for their baby. I just wasn’t sure what kind I wanted to do.

Then I recalled an editorial I read when they were married written, by I believe his mother, about his and her heritages. Somehow representing each of their heritages mentioned in that editorial on a quilt for their child seemed like the route to go. I then had to figure out just how to do that.

After many internet searches I decided on a thistle to represent his Scottish heritage and a Star of David to represent her Jewish heritage. Not knowing at the time if they were having a boy or a girl, I tried to keep the quilt gender neutral. I went with an off-white tone-on-tone print for the background. For the thistle I went with fabrics that were similar in color to an actual thistle. And while trying to determine what to go with for her side, I read that the color indigo is a significant color to the faith. So, for the Stars of David I went with a mottled tone-on-tone navy fabric as I couldn’t find a fabric that was actually indigo in color.

The Star of David blocks are paper pieced (a first for me) using the pattern I found at The Quilter’s Cache. [link] I originally tried making an applique of sorts using multiple layers of six pointed stars and hexagons, but that really didn’t work out as planned. (I did use part of a failed attempt as the quilt’s label though.) I then added strips to the stars to get them up to the block size.

The thistle applique is based on a Scotland sweatshirt I found while doing an image search using term “Scottish thistle” at Google. I traced my pattern onto sew-in interfacing, stitched the interfacing to the fabric (“right” sides together) along the traced line, made a slit in the interfacing, and turned the pieces “right” side out. When I had the quilt top together I appliqued and quilted the thistle in one step using the sewing machine’s blind hem stitch.

The quilting is as simple as I could think to make it. I don’t have the patience for hand quilting – plus, my stitches are extremely irregular anyway – and I don’t have anywhere near the ideal set-up for machine quilting. When I do quilting, I like to stitch in the ditch as it tends to hide my mistakes. However, I don’t even do that well. The blocks with the thistles only have the appliqueing as their quilting. For the Star of David blocks I tried stitching in the ditch along the inner and outer sides of the star. The remaining five blocks have an ‘X’ from corner to corner with a square – on point – in the center.

Materials:
4 – 100% cotton prints
100% polyester low loft batting
All purpose thread – cotton covered polyester core
Transparent nylon thread

Measures: 42 inches square. It’s practically big enough that the baby’s mom can use it as a throw!

It’s easier to see the quilting of Baby’s Heritage on the back of the quilt. [link] Plus the colors are a little truer in that photo.