Is it just me, or are babies this summer’s uber-trend?

Our Creative Director of Marketing, Emmie Goldenbaum just had a delicious little nugget of a newborn, baby Zoe Lou Cook, and we have three (count ‘em, THREE) other office babies on the way – Patty Baca, Retail Design Assistant is due February 9, Shirley Wismann, Production Assistant is due January 16, and Jessica Partida, Custom Project Assistant is due December 7.

Babies are a grand excuse to make a handmade gift, and lucky for those of us who have easily half a dozen gifts of this nature to give this coming year, baby quilts are fairly quick to make, and unstoppably charming when made out of the bountiful range of adorable baby fabrics now available.

One such fabric collection is this new arrival from scrapbook paper design company SEI. This fabric collection happens to feature some of the sweetest little designs from SEI’s paper collections Chick-a-dee and Chick-a-doo. We combined them both to offer three color stories of this oh-so-cute baby collection – boy blue, girl pink and classic, gender-neutral yellow.

Since it mirrors SEI’s papers, giving the gift of these bundles and roll-ups to a sewing mom got so much easier. Simply pair a fabric bundle with a gift tag from the paper collection, and the wrapping’s done. Or use the papers to make a themed baby shower invite, party games and the fabrics to make matching table toppers, gift bags, or other shower games. Or make the featured gift of the shower – a photo album to be filled with baby pics or pics from the shower, and an album baby quilt to match, signed by all those who attended.

Either way you go, you can’t lose. Babies make everything sweeter, and give us the perfect reason to spend more time with the fabrics we just can’t pass up. So make a handmade gift, or just hand over this irresistible bundle of joy and await the high-pitched squeals and heartfelt awww’s.