Back in March I posted the Ombre Rainbow Stars Baby Quilt I made for my daughter Ada. We struggled for a long time to have her, with 16 months of fertility treatment, eventually doing IVF using donor eggs. After such a long journey, I wanted to make something special as a thank you gift for our fertility specialist. I had some beautiful scraps of Ada’s baby quilt, so I looked around to see what I could make with.
The quilt was made with a fat quarter of each color, and made 14" blocks, so there wasn’t a lot of each fabric left, though I did have plenty of the background and backing. Eventually I ran into this inspiration piece, of a rainbow Carpenter’s Wheel wall quilt. She didn’t give dimensions, but since it was squares and half-square triangles, I knew I could figure it out on my own.
I did a few sketches on graph paper, using 8 colors instead of the 12 she had used. Once I settled on how to lay out the color placement so I could use 2 of each of the HSTs, I started cutting. I cut 3.5" squares for the HSTs and put them together using the two-at-a-time method, then trimmed them to 3". When sewn together, the patchwork comes to 20", and I added 2" borders all the way around for a finished quilt of 24". (A Carpenter’s Wheel is an easy design to find around the web for free, but if you need specifics on how many squares to cut to make an 8 color version like I’ve done, let me know and I can elaborate.)
I added triangular pockets to the back for hanging. I love the ‘yardstick & command strips’ method of hanging a wall quilt, so I added a pack of Command strips and directions into the gift bag.
I really wanted to do a nice label for the quilt with my embroidery machine, but it (like everything else) scares my dog. Since she’s not scared of my regular sewing machine, I sat down and retaught myself how to make it sew words. Something I haven’t done since I bought it 20 years ago!
Also, I gotta add that I’m proud of my gift bag find. The background of the quilt is charcoal grey with gold metallic stars, and I found a bag in charcoal with gold metallic stars too! Ada and I dropped it off at the fertility clinic last week, and the staff were pretty excited to meet her. 
