Finally some quilty sewing!

After Christmas, I was so excited to get started on some new projects. You might say I was a little impatient. I felt a little scatterbrained at first trying to decide what new project to start, so I ended up starting three.

One of my quilt plans for 2011 is to make a new quilt for my bed. The mister and I decided to go with the All Star 2 line. My plan is to make square-in-square blocks. Here are the first two.





I'm not sure what the final size blocks will be. These are about 12 inches, but I'm just kind of winging this one. The finished quilt needs to fit our queen-sized bed so I might finish the blocks at around 16 inches. We'll see how they turn out.

I got a baby shower invite in the mail yesterday, so after working on the two blocks last night, I started a quilt top for the baby-to-be. I tried out Oh Fransson's Mixtape pattern, but made a few modifications to speed up the process. I'll talk about this more later as I work on the quilt (it's due by next Friday), but I left out the sashing and I think it came together nicely.



Finally, I decided to start on a Kitchen Windows quilt from Elizabeth Hartman's book, The Practical Guide to Patchwork, using two of the colorways from Far Far Away 2. I wasn't quite sure what fabric to use as the "windows." I initially went with Kona Green Grass to create a lot of contrast between the windows and the background. But, the more I looked at the fabric, I didn't like how the color changed depending on the light. In natural light, the fabric matched the colors in FFA2 nicely, but in florescent light, it totally clashed.



The problem with going with a neutral, though, is that I'm worried the quilt will just get muddled.



Then I had the thought that if I go with the green window sashing, the green might overpower the FFA2 fabrics and stand out more than anything else. I kind of want the FFA2 fabric to be the star of the quilt, so I'm torn.

Any suggestions?

Thoughts on headboards

I was looking through pictures the other day and stopped at these.



The mister is not a big fan of our headboard. When we're settling into bed at night, he says it's not comfortable for his arm to rest against the headboard when we're spooning. I really liked the headboard, but now that we have our spring quilt on the bed, it doesn't really seem to go in with the rest of the room.

So, have you heard of CSN Stores? I was looking around on their (many) sites yesterday and found that they have some pretty cute headboards. I really like this one and this one, but I think the mister would have the same problem with these as he does with our current headboard. So, maybe we'll have to look into getting something like this or this. I love the florals and I think either would go great with the colors in the quilt and with the orange accent wall.

Spring quilt

Here are some photos of the quilt I'm in the process of making for my room. The mister and I wanted to mix things up a bit from what we've had in our room for the past ~five years. Since spring is on its way, we thought these colors would really brighten up the space.

The quilt top. I was inspired by Simply Authentic by Natalia from Piece N Quilt, but I altered it to fit the fabrics I wanted.



One of three throw/accent pillows I'll be making out of orange fabric to tie the bedding in with the orange wall.


The backing. I wanted the quilt to be reversible without having to piece as much as the front.


I finished piecing the backing yesterday. Next few steps? Baste, quilt, and bind. It's going to be a long process, but I'll be so pleased when it's complete.

Simple pillowcases

This is a silly thing to get excited about, but I made my first ever pillowcases yesterday. As part of the quilt I'm making for my bedroom, I wanted to make pillowcases to match that would be easier than shams that we wouldn't sleep on. I had read this post a few days ago and figured it was easy enough for me. I didn't even have to refer to it when I stitched the cases yesterday. Go me!