My Family Quilt

 

I've been on a bit of a sewing and quilting hiatus, as the arrival of Jonah Robert on June 28th commanded the vast majority of my attention.  Now that he's a bit older and is sleeping longer stints through the night and going longer between feedings, I've been able to make little pockets of time to work on some craft projects.  At the top of my priority list was a project for Grandma and Grandpa's 60th wedding anniversary, October 1.

While Gabby was out and we were at the IQF in Chicago in April, we visited a booth with a display of a quilt called "My Family Quilt" from the Whimsicals book, If Quilts Could Talk. While it featured applique, a technique of which I am not fond, I thought it was perfect as the pictures printed to fabric and text were appropriate for a 60th anniversary, and the size was such that it didn't seem too overwhelming.  Gabby was kind enough to buy the book for me as a gift, and I began thinking about what exactly I might want to do with the project.

I started on this very shortly after Jonah was born, but it has taken me until Sunday to completely finish it.  The main challenge was in getting the blasted photos printed to fabric.  It should NOT be that hard, but our home printer - the ink jet one required for printing to fabric - was having major issues and refuses now to render color properly.  I took the files to work to print on the printer there, but the files were corrupted somehow in the process and I had to recreate them all.  Then, when I was finally able to print again, I discovered that the work printer was also refusing to render color properly.  So the project sat and sat until Ben was able to print them on the neighbor's printer (thank you a million, Kathy Cayen)! From there, it went pretty quickly in terms of the construction.

I used almost exclusively Daiwabos and Daiwabo scraps from my stash.  The trims were purchased from Etsy (thanks to Susan Sponberg for her suggestion to look there).  I'd purchased additional trims, but to be honest, wasn't exactly sure how to apply some of them.  And others had means of application that were just too large for the scale of this project (most of these images are in the 2-3-inch square range and the entire project is about 40" wide by 16" tall).  I love the oversized rick rack, one of several color options I purchased from Tammy Tadd Designs, and the manner in which the border, rick rack, and center were applied was really slick, even if it does "waste" fabric. The rick rack just lies so flat!!

I presented it as a gift to Grandma and Grandpa this morning, and I think they loved it, even if it was nearly two months late.

Lil' Twister

As I'm not entirely certain when my sewing time will come to a halt, I've been working on finishing up some projects and starting only smallish projects. Or at least I've been trying to motivate to do so.  I did drop two quilts off at the shop yesterday to have them quilted - the State of Grace quilt I finished last week and the Just Before Dawn top that I finished a year ago May and have just had sitting around! 

I'd picked up a pattern and template called Lil' Twister (by Country Schoolhouse Designs of Superior, WI) at the IQF show in Chicago in April and thought it looked simple enough to give a start.  You begin by sewing together charm squares in a pleasing arrangement with a narrow border, like so:

And then you use the template to cut squares out from the sewn piece to give the illusion of pinwheels, like so:

Not terribly difficult to do, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't have looked better with fabrics with more contrast.  I do love the Martinique line by 3 Sisters that I used, but the pinwheels aren't necessarily all that apparent. Once I sew the blocks together, I'm thinking of adding on a narrow cream border and a slightly wider red border to finish it off and brighten it up a bit.

State of Grace

I've squeezed in a bit of sewing here and there for the past several weeks, working at a project that I''d had sitting around and cut out for some time. It's the State of Grace pattern (a Moda to Go jelly roll project) using the Shangri La fabric line by 3 Sisters.  I'm thinking that part of the reason I'd set the project aside (because I love the colors and design!) was that I had come up way short when I originally cut it out from the jelly roll. The good news is that I had significant portions of a jelly roll of a more recent line by the same designers - the Glace line - that mixed and matched well enough to allow me to finish the top.


Here's the full quilt (poor Ben did his best to hold it up, but it's on the larger side):


And a close-up.

I love the colors and can't wait to get this one quilted.  Ordered some backing fabric and might be able to drop it off this weekend.  Time will tell, though.

Bathtime Hoodie

At our guild's show in March, I purchased a really cute pattern for a baby bathtime hoodie, designed by RoseHip Lane (two guild members joined forces as this creative duo), along with the yard of toweling required to make it.  On Sunday, I finally made time to sit down to make it up, using 2.5" squares left over from baby's Pearls 'n Pinwheels quilt (isn't it fabulous when you can directly incorporate pieces from one project into the next?). 

I love how quickly and easily it came together and plan to stock up on toweling so that I can make more as gifts in the future.  The most time-consuming part is sewing down the binding and trying to keep the thread from being visible on the opposite side through the toweling (I wasn't always successful at that).

Sailboat Panel Quilt

When Mom and Dad were out a couple of weeks back, Mom pieced a quilt for the nursery to go with the sailboat theme.  We found the pattern and panel at the Fat Quarter Shop. It's the Nautical and Nice line by Sandy Gervais, which matches the Anchors Away hanging I made a few months back. Unfortuantely, due to all of the activity of the weekend, we ran out of time for layering, basting, and quilting the quilt before Mom headed back to Ohio, but I was able to finish it up this weekend so it's all set for the baby's arrival.

Here are a couple of photos.

The full quilt, hanging on the wall:

 Just the center portion of the quilt:

Thanks so much, Mom! He's going to love it!

Baby Quilt Finished

I finally finished sewing down the binding and hanging sleeve (not really needed right now, but it will if I want to enter it in the quilt show next time around!) on the baby's quilt. Here's the finished product:

Patched Works quilted it for me and the quilting design features little sailboats, which fits in with the nursery theme:

 The pattern, in case you missed earlier posts, is Atkinson Designs' Pearls 'n Pinwheels.  Images of the quilt in the room before the binding was sewn, as well as nursery decorating progress are available here.

Charity Quilts

I'm finally taking a little time to post pictures of the two charity quilts I was able to complete recently.  I hadn't necessarily planned to make two quilts (a third is in the works as well), but after I made a mistake and cut the batting too small to allow me to quilt the first one during a charity quilt work day, I started on the others and well, that's how things snowball, isn't it?

Both are quilts from the Atkinson Designs' Yellow Brick Road pattern and used fat quarters from my stash. The border for the purple quilt was left over from a baby quilt I made last summer.  Always nice to use up some of the stash, and hopefully some young child and teenage girl enjoy receiving these quilts. Our guild's charity this year was the Child Protection Center of the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, which protects children from abuse and provides resources to help them heal.