A new quilt for a new baby

If you've read my blog for a while you may recall that babies in our family always get a newborn quilt. (see some of them here and here and here).    Babies aren't born with good vision; they must learn to focus their eyes and distinguish colors.  For the first several weeks of life the only things they can see well are close-up faces and high-contrast black-and-white patterns.

So I always make a black-and-white quilt for a new baby, about a foot square so it can't suffocate even if it falls on the baby's face.  Put a B&W quilt in the baby's crib and he will scrutinize it intently, almost as if he is reading!

I've made two newborn quilts this year, and since I've been working on my book about rail fence patterns, I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and make them rail fence quilts so they could also be illustrations in the book.  Here was Luke's quilt:

And here's new baby Jack's (born last week):