Owl Baby Quilt

This is an old project.  I made two baby quilts last summer from the same easy pattern, from  book called 3-Fabric Quilts.  This one was for my cousin's baby, born August 2019, and the other was for a colleague's baby, born September 2019.  I can't find a photograph of the other one, but I was happy with how both of them turned out.

They were very easy and quick to make.  I think the most time-consuming part was thread-basting them.  I would definitely use this pattern or something similar again!

Handmade Christmas 2018

I didn't make very many Christmas gifts in 2018 - I had a 7-month-old, I'd been back at work for a rather overwhelming fall semester, and we were flying cross-country to visit family for the holiday.  In the end, I made two gifts, both from kits I bought from Connecting Threads.  The first one was a Santa Claus apron for my husband, who cooks and bakes a lot (since our son was born in May 2018, he's made dinner almost every night and baked bread and desserts at least two or three times a week, as I've struggled to keep my weight up while breastfeeding).  He also gets really into the Christmas spirit, so when I saw the kit for the apron I really wanted to make it for him.  The kit was really well done and pretty easy to sew up - you can't quite see it in the picture above, but the apron has two large patch pockets on the front, so it's quite functional!

The other gift I made in 2018 was an advent calendar for my son.  This kit is for a quilted advent calendar with small pockets, which are topstitched onto the quilted background so they are almost invisible.  This is really adorable, and hopefully he will enjoy it as he gets older.  This year, we put little dove chocolates in the pockets, and he really enjoyed eating them when we remembered to let him (and he learned to say "please" for his chocolate!).  For next year, we need to figure out a location and method for hanging the advent calendar where we can see it and where toddler hands and dog mouths can't reach it easily.

Rainbow Baby Quilt

 One of my friends from high school had a baby boy in July, and I made a quilt for him.  I used a pattern out of a book I borrowed from my mom.  It was reasonably fast and easy to make, and I used a lot of scraps - I did buy new fabric for the background and backing, but all of the colored fabrics were leftover from previous projects. 

The backing is a nice thick cloud-print flannel.  It should be very cosy this winter!

I tried a new basting technique with this quilt.  I thread-basted it instead of using basting spray, which has been my go-to basting method for many years.  The thread-basting was very time-consuming, but it held the layers together nicely and I really appreciate not having to buy basting spray or deal with its fumes.  I was satisfied, and after I finished this quilt I bought some curved needles to make thread-basting easier in the future.

I quilted the quilt using the suggestion in the book with the pattern.  I used my walking foot to quilt a curved "echo" around each colored diamond.  It was relatively fast and came out looking really nice.  It's not a very dense quilting pattern, which made the finished quilt nice and soft.  

All in all, I'm really happy with how this quilt turned out.  The only thing I'm not thrilled with is my failure to heat-set the ink I used to write the label on the binding - it smeared in the wash.  But I've learned my lesson and I won't make that mistake again!

Swoon Baby Quilt

Another in the 2018-2019 baby quilt series.  This is a 24" square swoon block with some borders added.  It's backed with a nice cozy cloud-print flannel that I bought at my local quilt shop.  

This is for a baby girl born to some of our friends at the beginning of February.  Her mom is an ecologist, which is why I picked the trees as the main focus print.  It's actually supposed to be a Christmas print, but it works for any time of year!  The background has a shimmery metallic print, and the binding is a text print with a berry recipe on it - the parents are into canning, so I thought they would enjoy that.

I was careful to arrange all of the pieces so that the trees pointed upwards.  I quilted the swoon block in the ditch, and then did a square spiral in the borders.  The quilting was easy, and I think pretty effective.

We delivered this quilt in person during spring break in March.  The recipient is so sweet and adorable!

There are 3 more baby quilts to come this summer, not including my baby's toddler bed quilt (we were gifted several beautiful hand-made quilts and blankets, so I decided to enlarge the baby quilt I had planned to make.  The top is finished but I still need to piece the backing before I can baste and quilt it).  I'm a little burned out on baby quilts right now, so I'm taking a break during Me-Made-May to sew some apparel.

Another baby quilt

This is a baby quilt I made for some college friends of my husband's last summer.  Their baby was born the same week as mine, and I worked on the quilt off and on through the summer (often with my baby asleep in the bouncer chair next to my sewing desk).

I got the idea for the pattern from a quilt in a blog post I read last spring, but I didn't love the way the pinwheels were arranged in that quilt.  Instead, I chose 5 blocks from an old modern half-square triangle quiltalong, and made them 8" square.  I found this awesome paper airplane print for the back, and some typewriter keys for the binding (the mother is an archivist, so I thought she would get a kick out of those prints).

Then I quilted the HST blocks in the ditch and filled in each of the large bars with a different FMQ design.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

Dinosaur baby quilt with scientific integrity

One of my best friends from college has a baby exactly 12 weeks older than mine.  While we were pregnant, I offered to make a quilt for her baby, and asked if she and her husband had any theme or color requests.  They asked for a dinosaur quilt with blues, greens, and yellows, but no purple. 

I immediately started searching the internet, and found these amazing paper-pieced dinosaur blocks.  Robert helped me choose three of the blocks, and I just bought those three patterns individually rather than the whole bundle.  All three of these dinosaurs - the pteranodon, velociraptor, and triceratops - are from the cretaceous era.  Since my friend is a scientist, we didn't want to send her baby a quilt that mixed dinosaurs from different eras (hence the scientific integrity).

I used some scraps from my stash and supplemented with some fabric from my local quilt shop.  It turns out the owner of the shop really likes dinosaur novelty fabric, so she had a great selection for me to choose from, and was very excited to hear about the dinosaur baby quilt!

The quilt is large for a baby quilt - if I'm remembering right, it finished at about 42" x 52".  The patchwork squares are 3" finished, and I had half a yard of the dino fossil fabric in the horizontal stripes.  I quilted a diagonal grid in the patchwork and dinosaur sections and parallel horizontal lines in the fossil stripes.  By the time I was done with the piecing, I wanted to quilt in a way that would be relatively easy and not detract from the dinos. 

I'm thrilled with how this quilt turned out, and my friend and her husband were, too! 

Handmade Christmas 2017

Wow, this post is late!  I didn't plan to make very many Christmas gifts, but somehow I ended up making a bunch anyway.  This quilt was for my Grandma, and it was a team effort with my mom.  We had given Grandma the fabric and pattern for Christmas two or three years ago, but we came to the conclusion that she was never going to sew it, so we decided to do it for her.  It was relatively quick (two weekends), and fun to do together!  It came out great, and Grandma loves it.

I've done Christmas sweaters for my niece and nephew every year so far (although last year I made a flannel shirt for my nephew instead of a sweater), and I kind of thought last year was going to be the last year - they're getting big, and the sweaters are getting to be more of a production.  But then I hit on the idea of a ballet wrap sweater for my dance-obsessed niece, and I couldn't not do one more year.

I used free patterns and used worsted weight superwash wool from Valley Yarns (the Webs house brand).  They were fun to knit, and apparently were a hit with the kids.

Earlier in the Fall, I knit a pair of socks for Robert for Christmas.  He loves them, but has dubbed them "the betrayal socks," because I knit them right in front of him without telling him they were for him.  He assumed they were for me, and was surprised that I was knitting myself socks in a blue tweedy yarn.  He tells me that he resisted the urge to ask if he could have them - he did it so well that I hesitated a bit to wrap them up for Christmas, because I wasn't sure if he liked them!

And lastly, I made a few Christmas-y kitchen things for us.  I took two fat quarters of Christmas-y fabric I bought for this purpose in Fall 2016 and finally made a set of four holiday napkins for our dining table.  I also knitted three Christmas dishcloths.  One of them made its way into my mom's stocking, and we kept the other two for ourselves.

Moda Love Baby Quilt

One of my good friends from grad school had a baby girl in mid-April, and I wanted to send a quilt for her.  I decided to finish this little quilt top, which I stitched up in November 2015.  The quilt top was really cute, but it had two problems: it wasn't flat, and it was too big for the 1 yard of backing fabric I had bought when I bought the charm pack I used for the top.

I did exactly what I had outlined in my previous post about the quilt top.  I trimmed a few inches off two of the borders, and pieced a row of leftover charm squares flanked by grey strips into the back.  It was a tight squeeze (the pieced back was exactly the same size as the top!) but it worked.

This is the first quilt I quilted on my new vintage Singer.  I did an orange peel pattern in the grid, and wavy flower vines in the borders.  The non-flatness of the top was indeed not a problem, especially after I washed the whole quilt.  It's soft and cosy - not too densely quilted.  I forgot to measure the quilt after I washed it, but I think it's about 40 by 42 inches.

I'm very happy with how this little quilt turned out.  I like the pattern, and I could definitely see myself using it again, either as a baby quilt or as a bed quilt for a full or queen sized bed (using 10" squares instead of 5").

Modern Arizona Wedding Quilt

One of my best friends got married last June.  I wanted to make a quilt wedding gift, but what with my graduation last May, I didn't get it started until the beginning of June.  Of course, I didn't have time to finish it before their wedding (I think I got the top finished), and then we moved cross-country in July and then I started my new job, and I finally finished it in February.

I made up the quilt pattern based on a picture of a quilt I had seen online.  I like it because it looks sort of like a double-wedding ring, but without the crazy template piecing.  I used two jelly rolls of Arizona-themed fabric from connecting threads.  I picked this fabric because my friend and her now-husband met and still live in Arizona.  It was a happy coincidence that several of the fabrics are a kind of coral-ish orange color, since our bridesmaid dresses were coral/orange!

My favorite fabric is this adorable cactus print:

I quilted loops in each row of the quilt, and bound it with leftover jelly roll strips.

Here's my sketch of the quilt blocks.  It's a twin-sized quilt (I didn't measure it after I washed it, but the blocks finished at 30" by 30", and it's two blocks wide by three blocks long).

Quilt basting party

Back in September, my mom came to visit and we basted a quilt!  I started this quilt back in June, although apparently this is the first time I've blogged about it.  It's a wedding gift (now very belated) for a very dear friend and her husband.  They had a beautiful and fun outdoor wedding in the mountains at the end of June.

I knocked this pattern off from a picture I saw on Pinterest over a year ago.  If I remember right, the quilt I saw was intended to be a fancy Irish chain, but I thought it looked more like a modernized, embellished Double Wedding Ring.

I was not up for making a queen-sized bed quilt, so this quilt is a twin size.  The top finished at about 62" by 92".  I figure it will be perfect for the newlyweds to cuddle under on the couch, or they can use it as a guest bed quilt.

My mom helped me spray-baste the quilt.  It turns out our empty spare bedroom is perfect for quilt-basting.  Since then I've been slowly chipping away at the quilting.  I can't wait to get it done so I can finally send it to our friends (maybe it'll be a combined Christmas and belated wedding gift!).

Star baby quilt top - with a slight problem

A few weeks ago (actually, a few weeks before Thanksgiving) I was feeling like I had done a lot of apparel sewing this year and not enough quilting.  I have fabric and pattern all ready to go for two or three lap to bed size quilts, but I was also feeling kind of overwhelmed with work and job-searching (I'm expecting to graduate in May), so I pulled out a Simply Color charm pack I've had sitting around for a while and the leftover grey background fabric from my Half Moon Modern Half-Square Triangle quilt and went to town with this free Moda pattern.

It took two evenings to piece the top.  I didn't trim my HST units or pin any seams until I had all of the rows sewn together.  It was quick and easy and fun, and really satisfying to get it done quickly, and I think it looks great - but it is decidedly not flat, which I'm feeling pretty okay about.  I think it will quilt out just fine.  I am not stressing out about this little baby quilt.

The problem came at the end of the second night of piecing, when I pulled out the fabric I had bought for backing and binding when I bought the charm pack.  I only have one yard of the backing fabric.  Lately I've been in a groove of making baby quilts about 40" by 50" and so I assumed that I would have 1.5 yards for the backing, but I don't.  I don't have enough binding fabric to do anything but bind it (only 1/3 yard!) and I don't have any of the grey fabric left over.  I think what I'm going to do is trim 4" of of the two wider borders on the top and then piece that fabric into the back along with a few leftover charm squares that didn't get used in the top.

I'm not really feeling inspired to finish this quilt right now, but at least I have a plan for how to finish it.  I don't like to have long-term hibernating UFOs, but I also don't know of any babies who will be needing a quilt from me any time soon, so I think I'm going to piece the back and then fold it all up until I feel like finishing it.

Stars baby quilt

I made this quilt for a church friend whose baby shower was last Sunday afternoon.  It was a bit of a scramble to get it done - I started it about 96 hours before the shower.  The four star blocks are from Vintage Quilt Revival.  Except for the blue-grey background and the purple print in the stars, all of the fabrics were scraps and stash.  I think there are elements of four other baby quilts in this quilt.

For the back, I used a cut off strip from the top of this quilt, bordered with the grey background from the front and filled in with a green solid I've had in my stash for a long time - this is almost the last of it.  To wrap the quilt, I rolled it up with the back facing out, and when she opened it my friend thought it was the main side of the quilt!  I quilted it all over with loopy-loops, using charcoal thread in the bobbin for the whole thing.  I used the same charcoal thread on top for the background, and switched to an off-white for the star blocks.  Then I machine bound it.

 I labeled the quilt by writing directly on the binding at one corner on the back of the quilt using an archival permanent pen.  It finished at about 39" by 50" after washing.

I'm really pleased with how the quilt turned out, and it got lots of oohs and aahs at the baby shower.  My friend sat with it over her lap for the rest of the shower!

Now I'm about out of low-volume fabrics.  I'm also running low on the green solid and the blue wave print that has showed up in several of my recent baby quilts (although not this one).  I think I need to re-stock my stash.  I'm really wanting a fat quarter or half yard bundle of the new Modern Background Paper by Zen Chic for Moda ...

Sailboat Baby Quilt!!!

I am super excited about this quilt!  I made it for my brand new nephew and gave it to him (to his parents, really) last weekend.  This is a sailing family ...

... so I was super excited when I found this paper-pieced sailboat pattern at Ants to Sugar.  I learned to paper piece at Quiltcon, so this was a great opportunity to keep my skills up and make something really cool at the same time.  The fabric I used for the sails is a text print with sailing-related words.  It's from the Daysail collection by Bonnie and Camille from Moda.

I quilted in the ditch around the sailboat, did wavy lines in the water, stars in the sky, and a line of waves on the horizon.  Here's the back:

It's not super clear in the picture, but the top fabric on the back is origami boats.  The bottom of the back has more of the sailing words, and the two middle prints are sea animals.

The whales are Preppy the Whale by Elizabeth Hartman.  They were quick and easy to piece, despite the fact that they each have a fair number of very small pieces.

I quilted the whales in the ditch, too, so there are ghost whale outlines on the back.

I'm really happy with this quilt.  I love how it looks, and I feel like the piecing (especially the sailboat, but also the whales) turned out really well, better than I knew I could do.  I felt that way about the lone star quilt I made for this nephew's older sister when she was born, too!

Flying Geese Baby Quilt

This is baby quilt 1 of 2 .... the second one isn't quite finished yet, but hopefully will be this weekend.  This one is for my cousin's baby boy, who was born about three weeks ago, and it is currently on its way across the ocean to him.  I've admired modern flying geese quilts for a while, so when I decided to make two baby boy quilts in close succession I decided to take the opportunity to make one.  I used all scrap fabric for the geese: warm scraps for the geese and cool scraps for the sky.  A lot of these scraps (I think all of the warm ones) came from Hawthorne Threads scrap packs.

I arranged the flying gees in what I think is an interesting-but-not-too-crazy arrangement with lots of negative space.  My cousin is nuts about owls, so I was super excited when I found an owl print.  My original plan was to put squares of it in the quilt top where some of the negative space is, but I decided that was too busy so I put it on the back instead:

I quilted it very simply - in the ditch around all of the flying geese and three parallel rows in the outer border, all using the walking foot.  I hand-stitched the binding.

A flock of Geese

Week before last I finished up the quilt top for the first of two babies who will be born into my extended family this summer.  I used a bunch of scrap fabrics and some from Hawthorne Threads scrap packs to make a bunch of flying geese.  My original plan was to put in some squares of that owl print, because my cousin (the mom) loves owls, but once I had the geese made and laid out, it seemed too busy, so I put the owls on the back instead.  I filled in around the geese with a charcoal solid.

Here is the back.  I bought half a yard of the owls, but the other two fabrics are stash.

Today I'm going to baste and hopefully quilt this baby quilt.  I think I'm going to stitch in the ditch around the flying geese and then do some straight lines in the border.