My “After the Rain” Let’s Grow Quilt for Monthly Milestone Photos

It has been several weeks since I shared any finished quilts, but I have been doing a lot of sewing behind the scenes. I have two projects that I am waiting to get back from the long arm quilter, including the cover quilt for my first pattern. I am so excited to share that with you in the coming months!

But first up, today, I am sharing my most recent finish, the “Let’s Grow” monthly milestone quilt. We are expecting our second child, a baby girl, this month and I fell in love with this pattern the minute I saw it. I purchased the pattern from Casey of Well Spring Designs, and despite all the different numbers that go into the design, it sewed up relatively quickly!

And, of course, I did change the pattern quite a bit. The original pattern did not have the rainbow in the center. Our pregnancy came after a really difficult year and two lost pregnancies, so we will forever refer to this little one as our “rainbow baby,” and I wanted to incorporate this into the quilt. I purchased the “After the Rain” quilt pattern from Quilter’s Candy and made the mini size (a single block with borders). The mini size measured 22”x22”, which was just a little bit bigger than original block in the “Let’s Grow” quilt, so I removed the top border and trimmed the sides to make it work.

I planned to make this another pink and purple quilt, but my three-year old insisted that rainbows have more than just two colors (and he IS right…), so I decided to add all the colors of the rainbow to the border. And because you can’t have a rainbow without some sunshine, I picked the most adorable sun burst fabric for the back. I have all the fabric details outlined below.

When it came time to quilt, I lengthened my stitch to 4.5 and made simple straight lines spaced 1.5 inches apart.

I absolutely love how it turned out! I am planning to use this quilt to take monthly photos of our little girl for the first year. It will be so fun to watch our little rainbow baby grow on this quilt. I am still looking for fun and creative ideas to mark which number month I am taking in each photo, if you have any ideas please send them my way!