Second Baby Syndrome and the rise of the Stucks

Have you guys read Shel Silverstein’s poem about the goat who ate the little boy’s fabulous story?  I love his poetry and that one is particularly fitting today.  In it, the little boy is waxing rhapsodically about the wonderful story and how the goat ate it and it was all the goat’s fault and he could never replicate the story and so now all we get is a mediocre story.    It’s  a pretty cute poem, with an adorable goat illustration.  Well, today I have my own version- blogger ate my post!  I super promise I had a lovely post on these quilts all scheduled to post right before my parents got here last week (more on that later this week) and then it disappeared!  I have not idea what happened to it, whether blogger really ate it or I just accidentally deleted it, or what, but alas its gone.  So here I will try to replicate it but you will never know whether it lives up to the previous version.
Back in the day I made a bunch of baby quilts, but at some point there started to be more babies than I could keep up with so I started doing other smaller projects for them.  I was pretty ok with this decision until we got home at Christmas and started going through all the baby quilts there.  One of the most striking (and sort of embarrassing things) we discovered was how many more quilts had been made for me than for my sister.  We decided this was “second baby syndrome” at work and I felt really bad about it!  So to avoid falling into that trap, I decided I should make baby quilts for any siblings of children for whom I’d previously made quilts.
A little over three years ago, my friend Michael Stuck and his fun wife Natalie had their first baby girl.  I didn’t have any pictures of the quilt I made for her, but Michael was kind enough to take one and send it to me.  The lady bug blocks are paper pieced, and I chose the fun complementary mouse fabric since Michael and I are mouse people.  Mary has turned into a really bright and entertaining little girl- very friendly and articulate and the least picky eater I’ve ever known!

Now they’re expecting another baby girl (Samantha) right about the same time as my sister is expecting her baby.  I decided to make a quilt for Samantha using the charm pack I won last year in the SewHappyGeek tablerunner/wall hanging swap.  I’d intended to make a tablerunner using the pattern that Jenna made after the swap, but in the end decided the charm pack would make a great baby quilt.  It pieced up really quickly and has a bunch of fun variety.  It’s the first time I’d ever used precuts, and they were perfect for this type of project.  I used the coordinating solids for borders/sashing/binding, and I quilted spirals in the center blocks, my favorite bubble pattern in the vertical borders,  and a leafy pattern in the horizontal border.  I hope  she likes it!




Good luck and prayers to the Michael and Natalie as they await the arrival of their new little girl.  If she’s anything like Mary, we better be prepared for the Stucks to take over the next generation!