Help Required - Baby Quilt.

Hi - hoping someone can point me in the right direction as I know nothing about this stuff. I am hosting my friends baby shower on Sunday and was thinking to do baby singlet painting as one of the activities, however there are 30 people coming. I had the idea that we could each paint a panel for a quilt and then get this made up. Is this idea okay do you think or even possible?

If yes, what material do I need to buy and what size would the squares need to be? And then what material would I need to buy for the back? I would have to take it somewhere to be made as I am terrible with craft things..........as you can probably tell from this post.

Even if she never uses the quilt, it would be a pretty cool keepsake I would think.

Please ladies, point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance :)

My thought would be - alternatively you could purchase a quilt and get people to sign or decorate it on the day.

It sounds like an an amazing, beautiful idea, it would be creative and fun for the attendees, and a lovely keepsake for her. What a beautiful thought!

It also sounds like a LOT to organise in just a few days. Quilts are not easy to sew together and have a good finish, ie, neat joins and everything perfectly flat. If you really want to do this, and don't sew at all yourself, I would suggest you find a local sewing/alterations person, and have a chat with her (or him.) You'd want to know the price of having it all stitched together - and it will be time-consuming, I would think even with a machine - before you go out and buy the makings.

If you did decide to go ahead, if you used squares of approx 21cmx21cm, (the 1cm becomes a 1/2cm seam allowance for stitching together) and sewed them as a 6x5 retangle, the final dimensions would be 100x120cm, plus a few more cm for a border.

You'd probably want to use cotton, with the decorated squares one shade or a range of several colours, and a single large piece of cotton for the back, pattern or neutral, plus enough for the border, either precut binding or enough cotton to make 5m or binding - the sewer could advise you how much you'd need as this depends how wide the border will be. You'd then need the fill, and the thread, and the paints/pens whatever is appropriate for decorating. And you'd need to make sure every quare is cut accurately, as if they're a bit skew-wif (sp?) it will make the whole quilt not lay flat.

It's such a lovely idea, I really hope you do carry it out, good luck.

I had a quilt made (cot size) and my beautiful friend did the bulk of the work, then I paid for one of her friends to do the actual quilting - $100 just for that, so you could be looking at a big expense for something that may not look all that nice (LOL I know if I decorated quilt panel it wouldn't look too crash hot!).

Is there something else you could all decorate - letters of the alphabet and 1-10 or something like that? Might be a bit less effort and $$.

Have a lovely shower!

PS I think the singlet thing is lovely. You could also get some plain 1sies and hats. People could sew on buttons and lace. When I did it at a friend's not everyone made one anyway.

Thanks for responding....I think it is more diff ult than I realised. I like the 1-10 numbers etc though, I might go have a look at spotlight and see what I can find :)