Are You Experiencing a Baby Tsunami?

I don't know about your world, but in mine, there's a monumental Covid baby boom.

It's apparent that young adults didn't have anything better to do nine months ago - after making sourdough, resin art, beer and kombucha. They finally said, "What the heck!"

My favorite kind of quilt to make for potential and extant babies is an "Everything in the World" quilt. The theory behind this quilt is that, while all the baby experts say parents should talk to their babies constantly, they don't tell them what to say. "Aren't you a cutie-pie?" and "That's an excellent poop!" gets old quick. So this quilt is designed to spark conversation. Here are two, hot off the machine.

Each quilt has 108 different fabrics. I cut four inch squares for these quilts all year long,  Whenever I pull a kid-friendly novelty fabric out for any reason, I cut a couple of squares from it.

Then, when someone has a baby, I go through the squares and sew them into nine-patches. My nine-patches usually have theme: dogs and cats; imaginary or anthropomorphic animals (animals golfing, fishing, etc); humans; household objects; transportation; healthy food; junk food; holidays (Halloween; Chanukah, Passover, Christmas); things that fly (mythological or real); things that float in water, etc. 

Below, you can see a "Humanity" themed 9-patch. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the center. (I found the RGB fabric at Joann's online, not in stores). A Dutch fabric brought to me from Holland is in the upper left, Tokyo-themed fabric is in the lower right; there are lips, hands, and eyes (the latter are from a Halloween fabric, and they glow in the dark.)

Next, the top row is things that fly (including Harry Potter and cows-in-nursery-rhymes, ladybugs, Mighty Mouse,), and Animals, Other, are under that.  The anteater fabric on pink is my absolute favorite these days. 

Hopefully, this next patch will spark much nutrition education for the baby.

Sometimes my categories puzzle even me. The next one was supposed to be a "household items" nine patch, so why did I throw in a robot? (Lost in Space? Roomba?) Also, what baby born in 2021 will experience vinyl records? (Hopefully at Grandma's house). Let alone stamps, as the US post office teeters.

The next segment shows my Jewish studies nine-patch (bottom-center, see the matzoh?), surrounded on the left by sea life (Yellow submarine with Paul, shell, rubber ducky, octopus, kayak), sports (above the sea life); food-related (radishes, forks, citrus, pasta, middle top); random animals on the upper right (zebra, lizards, festive penguins); and more household objects on the lower right (chair, fireplace, thread spools, whistle, keyboard, cowboy hats - just the important stuff.)

To assist parents even further, I throw in most of my black-and-white prints, especially in the border/outermost round of squares, even if they're not necessarily juvenile prints. My own experiments with my babies has proven to my satisfaction that babies really do like looking at black-and-white patterns - I've literally seen them stop crying when presented with some of my better black-and-white fabrics. It's gravy if these fabrics have to be explained at length. The borders that you can see below include dalmations, crowns (as in royalty), screws, dice (they're never too young to be taught about Las Vegas), tree trunks, etc.

For a fabriholic like me, however, there's one flaw in this system - some fabrics are just too wonderful to cut up. Like this amazing Tula Pink fabric. The unicorns are huge, I only had a fat-quarter, and a 4" square wouldn't have the impact that a giant piece has. 

So this fabric got to star in its own baby quilt. While it won't give the baby a LOT to talk about, it will hopefully fall in love with the beautiful rendering. 

And I put a collection of black-and-white 4" squares on the back, in case the mother must sedate the baby quickly. The center was yet another fabric that I didn't want to cut up. 

So tell me - is there a baby boom in your world, too?