Ribbon candy quilt: a curvy baby quilt made to be gifted

Some quilts stay with us. Others are made knowing from the very beginning that they will eventually belong to someone else.

My Ribbon Candy quilt was one of the latter.

I started this little quilt in February 2023 as part of a group challenge in my Facebook quilting group. By November 2023, it was quilted, bound, finished, and ready to be gifted to a baby girl. And, in typical fashion, I managed to give it away without taking proper photos of the finished quilt!

Quilt process

Ribbon Candy is a free quilt pattern by Megan Collins, and the design immediately caught my attention because of those wonderful easy to make curves. The blocks intertwine to create ribbons that seem to weave across the quilt, giving a relatively simple design so much movement.

The crib-size version finishes at 36" × 40" and is designed around one standard charm pack. I used a Moda fabrics charm pack, that I do not remember the designer.

We chose Ribbon Candy as one of our group challenges in my Facebook quilting group, which made the process even more enjoyable.

There is something motivating about knowing that other people are working on exactly the same pattern at the same time. Everyone chooses different fabrics, encounters different little challenges, and gradually the same pattern starts appearing in completely different personalities.

Ribbon Candy was also a great excuse to practise curved piecing. Curves can look intimidating when you're used to straight seams and neat little squares. But, as with most quilting techniques, they become much less frightening once you actually sit down and sew them.

Quilting

For the quilting, I kept things simple. I quilted it on my domestic sewing machine using my walking foot, creating rows of waves across the quilt with my machine's wavy stitch.

Pattern

If you'd like to try Ribbon Candy yourself, Megan Collins has a full tutorial on her website along with information about getting the free pattern.

The crib-size version is particularly good if you have a charm pack waiting in your stash and want to experiment with curved piecing without committing to a large quilt.

Find the Ribbon Candy tutorial and free pattern here.