Finished Out to Sea Quilt for Baby Annie

My sister-in-law had a baby girl last week on my mother-in-law's birthday - how cool is that?! I made this quilt for her and, fortunately, gave it to her the Sunday before. Talk about good timing!



I had been going back and forth trying to decide what fabrics to use for baby Annie's quilt for quite some time. Then, when I saw Sarah Jane's Out to Sea collection, I knew I had to have it. See, my sister-in-law is a huge fan of Sarah Jane. The colors in the deep sea jewel colorway were perfect too!

I thought it would be fun to do equilateral triangles. I cut 6" strips of fabric and then sub-cut the triangles by rotating my ruler, using the 60 degree mark.

For the back, I used some of the leftover triangles as well as the pirate girls print.



I did straight-line quilting on each side of the seam lines on the diagonal, giving it a diamond look on the back.

For the binding, I used the Water Chevron print in Bloom from the same colorway.

The quilt measures approximately 42"x48".

Welcome, baby Annie! We're so glad you've come to join our family!

Nana's 60th Birthday Quilt

I've been getting a ton of spam since I turned off the word verification for posting comments. I'm sorry to have to do this, but if you're an anonymous commenter, you won't be able to comment here. =( Sorry about that, but I'm tired of getting so much spam filling my inbox.

***

Warning: This will be a picture-heavy post!

So, my mother-in-law turns 60 this week. A pretty big milestone, I think. She's not big into birthday parties though. So in an effort to do something really special for her birthday, I enlisted the help of everyone in the family to make her a quilt.

My friend, Colleen, made a quilt like this for her mom last year and she had some great tips on how to put this one together.

I gave everyone a piece of Kona white fabric that was 10.5" square and asked them to use Crayola crayons to drawer a picture for Nana. It could be a favorite memory, something the person admires about Nana, and so on.

I was really impressed with everyone's drawings. Some were sweet, some were funny. It was a good mix.

The finished quilt measures about 70x70. I limited the quilting to straight lines on both sides of each seam so it wouldn't cut into any of the pictures. Quilting this way also helps the quilt drape really nicely.

We gave her the quilt on Sunday, and she cried while opening it...just the reaction we were hoping for.

Happy birthday, Nana! We love you!

August/September Bee Blocks and Other Random Sewing

August was Megan's month in the Sew Beautiful Bee. She asked for Lone Starburst blocks. She sent a bunch of really bright fabric scraps and asked us to follow the tutorial found at the Six White Horses blog here. I loved, loved, loved making this block! I usually start to sweat a bit when asked to paper piece, but this one was very doable for me and I had a lot of fun with it. I'll definitely be making some of these for myself in the near future!

AnneMarie's turn was next for September. She asked for improv hexagon blocks inspired by Angela's block here. AnneMarie sent a bunch of Japanese import prints. It was fun to fussycut these fabrics for the hexagons.

While perusing Instagram, I saw Rae's maxi version of her Washi Dress and just about died. I stalked her blog for a couple days, anxiously awaiting the release of her pattern. I snagged one and quickly bought fabric to make a Washi Tunic and a Washi Maxi. Here's my "quick, honey, take a picture of my shirt with my phone" photo. I haven't tackled the maxi yet, but I am please with how the tunic version came together.

My older daughter is at the age where not only does she love to wear skirts and dresses, but she likes wearing things that I've made for her. I want to take advantage of that for as long as I can since I know all too soon she'll refuse to wear anything I make for her or even hint at thinking is cool, because of course anything Mom thinks is cool will be the complete opposite. Several Saturdays ago, she wanted to wear a skirt (of course), and I sadly, but not surprisingly, was behind on laundry. I pulled out some Heather Ross Crafy Chloe Pin People fabric and made a quick 10-minute skirt. My daughter's friend wanted to play, and when she got to our house, she saw me making the skirt for my daughter. She asked if I'd make her one too. I tried to hide my huge goofy grin, said, "Sure," and asked her what her favorite color is (pink). I finished my daughter's skirt, she got dressed, and the two girls went out to play. I then ran upstairs, found some pink fabric, and whipped together another 10-minute skirt for the friend. (I noticed she was wearing it yesterday when she came over to play...my heart sang!)

I mentioned earlier that paper piecing makes me nervous. But, I've really come to love English paper piecing (EPP). I've been accumulating supplies over the last couple months and decided it was about time I make a zippered pouch to store my paper pieces in. For this pouch, I cut two 10x10 inch squares from Melody Miller's Ruby Star Shining typewriter fabric and two 10x10 inch squares from Joel Dewberry's Deer Valley Lodge Lattice in Azure fabric, and used a 10 inch zipper. I boxed the bottom of the pouch, making the finished bag about 8 inches wide by 9 inches tall. It's the perfect size (for now), and it's great to have all my EPP supplies in one place.

Well, thanks for making it through that hodgepodge of a post. I have a couple more finished quilts to show over the next little bit. Have a good weekend, everyone!

September 11, the day after

So I meant to post this yesterday because it would have made better sense, but I was distracted by a sick baby.

September 11 is kind of a bummer day here in the states because of the World Trade Center attack. It's also the day I had my miscarriage a couple years ago. To top it all off, my bestie cousin started chemo yesterday for ovarian cancer. She had to have a complete hysterectomy and has not yet had the opportunity to have kids. She's only 32.

I found out she was scheduled for chemo a couple weeks ago. My mom is a breast cancer survivor (20 years now - go Mom!) and I remember her talking about how cold she'd get during her chemo treatments. So, I thought my cousin could use a quilt. Not only to keep her warm, but maybe lift her spirits and remind her that she has a lot of people thinking about her and cheering her on. To remind her to have

I pulled together a bunch of fabrics and cut 12.5" squares. Simple, big patchwork. I used fabrics from Lizzy House, Riley Blake, Tula Pink, Laurie Wisbrun, Momo, American Jane, Heather Bailey, Doohikey Designs, Denyse Schmidt, Joel Dewberry, Emily Herrick, and others.

For the back, I paper pieced "hope" using the wonky alphabet pattern from Kelbysews and added a DS Quilts print from one of her Joann's lines, a Lizzy House Pearl Bracelets print, and a Joel Dewberry print from Modern Meadow.

I quilted it in meandering double loops and bound it in a plaid from Play Ball from Riley Blake.

The quilt measures about 60"x60".

Two More Finished Baby Quilts (one of them made by the mister!)

A couple years ago, the mister thought it would be fun to try teaching me some photography tips. He has a passion for photography and I thought it couldn't hurt to learn how to take better pictures of my sewing and quilting projects. While he was teaching me about his hobby, he thought it'd be fun to learn how to make a quilt. So, we looked through my fabric (he picked Arcadia by Sanae) and then found a tutorial he thought would be fun (Jacquie Gehring's Wonky Log Cabin tutorial). I showed him how to use the rotary cutter appropriately and then he came up with his own cutting/sewing/pressing station, which pretty much meant that the cutting mat, ironing board, and sewing machine were all set up on our living room floor so he could go from one station to the next with only rotating his torso. He used his knee to push down the pedal as he sewed. I wish I would have taken a picture because it was quite the sight!

These are the four blocks he made during the first couple sewing sessions.

After making those blocks, he got busy and distracted by other things and they were put aside for a couple years. However, two of his coworkers got married to each other a couple months ago and are expecting their first child. The mister wanted to pull out the blocks and finish a baby quilt to give to his friends. As the first few blocks took a bit of time to make, he wanted to switch gears and use a design that he could make in an evening. So, I helped by cutting the fabric and he sewed them into strips. He did all the piecing and pressing. He even spray basted the quilt, straight-line quilted it, and attached the first side of the binding.

He did such a great job and I'm so proud of him. He took the quilt to work a couple days later (I had to show it off at the SLMQG meeting of course) and gave it to the husband/soon-to-be-dad in the break room. I wish I could have seen it! The mister said his face turned all red as he handed over the quilt to his coworker in a room full of people. Priceless!

Earlier that day, I was working on this baby quilt. When my partner sent me the pillow she made for me in round 7 of the Pillow Talk Swap, she included an extra purple string, paper-pieced star that didn't end up fitting into her pillow design. I used that as the focal point of this quilt.

I don't have a lot of purple in my stash, which is strange because I love purple for clothes, but I guess I just haven't been a big user of it in quilts. Anyway, I managed to find some purples that worked well with the star as well as the solid that I picked up from Joann's: Kate Spain's Central Park, Lizzy House's 1001 Peeps, and Joel Dewberry's Heirloom. I used strips from each of those prints to make the binding as well. (That darn breeze wouldn't let me get a flat picture of the quilt!)

On the back, I just pieced a simple improv block using some of the scraps from the front and then offset it with the purple solid.

I also tried a new thread on this quilt. First, I used my typical piecing and quilting thread (but in gray instead of white), which is a 100% cotton machine quilting thread from Joann's. I'm not sure the brand, but it comes in a hefty size on the spool. I also wanted to try out Superior thread so I ordered a sampler pack a few weeks ago and one of the spools they sent me happened to be a dark purple that matched the purple solid in this quilt perfectly. And, just like in my last post, I tried some more new-to-me quilting designs. They're not even or consistent or great to say the least, but I kind of like them. They're "homey" and give the quilt a handmade feel that I like. Plus, practice makes perfect, right?

This quilt will be finding a home with a new little baby soon-to-be born.