Category Archives: sewing

Preemie Quilts

In September, 2006 the quilting group from the American Women’s Club in Finland arranged for the ladies of the club to make quilt squares for the Quilt Pink project. At the same time, we were working on a separate quilt to use as our own charity fundraiser and didn’t have time to finish the pink quilt. Since Quilt Pink was a one-time thing, we had all of those beautiful quilt squares waiting to be used.

On April 3, a member of the AWC went into labor and delivered her twin girls 15 weeks early. I had read about preemie quilt programs and knew that the leftover pink squares were about the right size for these sweet little babies. I called Linda, the quilt guru, and suggested that we meet at her place and make a couple of quilts. We met the next day and got started.

The backing is a beautiful old sheet with a white-on-white pattern. This isn’t the square we eventually went with, but it’s the only picture I took of the process.

preemie quilt square

These are the two quilts after they were quilted, washed and dried. Although we didn’t use the square in the above picture, these were actually the first two choices. The preemie quilts are about 13″ x 13″ (31cm X 31cm). Linda did most of the work because she’s a lot faster than me.

preemie quilt 2

preemie quilt 3

Thanks for looking!

Hello, Kitty!

I made a cake and a blanket for Nadia Laukkanen’s baby shower. First the cake! There wasn’t really a theme for the shower, but she is having a girl. I was looking for an idea and thought about some kind of princess cake. While looking at pictures and thinking about what I was going to give her as a gift, I thought of some Hello Kitty fabric I have. I searched for Hello Kitty cake pictures and found a great site with a template. DLTK has lots of great things and I’ve printed a lot of pages from the site in the past. The HK template is here. I made my favorite chocolate cake the night before the shower and let it sit all night. Tip: covering the bottom of the cake pan with some parchment cut to fit will keep the cake from sticking. Yes, I did that. The chocolate cake I make is very dense and was easy to cut. If you are using a cake mix or some other recipe that has a lot of crumb, you should freeze the cake before cutting it. Here is the template on top of the cake and I pulled the excess cake (Is there such a thing?) away as I cut it. I pulled gently to be sure that I had cut all the way through.


After cutting the head shape out, I transferred it to the decorative base. Isn’t it cute already?


I forgot to take a picture of this part, but it’s a very important step when dealing with a cake shape that has been cut out. Spread a very thin layer of frosting all over the cake to seal in the crumbs. It will keep you from spreading the crumbs into your decorations.

After the crumb coat, I spread a thicker layer of frosting over the cake. I used a 7-minute frosting recipe from Food Network. I wanted a WHITE frosting and my usual favorite is a little yellow. The decorations are cut out from foam.

For her gift, I made a no-sew fleece blanket. This was super easy and took about two hours. It’s just two pieces of fleece fabric knotted together.

I also made a little card but forgot to get a picture of that. Thanks for looking!