Dinosaur Baby Quilt

 

Shayla made this cute baby quilt with dinosaur fabrics.

 

 

I did an all-over spiky swirl design with a few double loops here and there.  I thought the spiky swirls looked very dinosaur-ish. 

 

Here's a shot of the back. Thanks for letting me quilt your baby gift Shayla!

Jessica's Baby Quilts

I am pretty behind on blogging here, so I am going to try to quickly power out a bunch of posts, if that is possible.  I have a number of pre-Christmas quilts to share and of course I will share some of my homemade gifts I made this year.  So stay tuned!

 

 

Jessica had me quilt up several baby quilts for her Etsy shop. 

 

She made a border of prairie points that I avoided quilting over. 

 

 

This one is adorable.  Made from Lily Pulitzer fabrics, it's already sold from her shop. 

 

I quilted an all over flowers, swirls, and leaves combo on it with a custom border.

 

 

And lastly is this little gem.

I did another all over flowery design on this one.

Twin Baby quilts

Cathy is becoming a first time grandma with a set of twins!  A boy and a girl who could be arriving anytime soon, but hopefully after Christmas to avoid any NICU time.  Anyway, she asked me to make them baby quilts much like the baby quilts her kids had.  Just a simple whole-cloth quilt and the girl quilt had to have ruffles.  "Ok, I can do that", I said.  

She supplied all the fabric and ruffles.  For the boy I did a boy-ish swirl with triangles around them instead of feathers.  I happened to have the same kind of dot in orange in my own stash and took it upon myself to use that instead of the same blue dot for the binding.  

And here's the pink one.  I layered the fabrics and sewed around the edge leaving a space for opening.  Then I pinned the ruffle around it and stitched that on all the way around again.  I had to go back and fix a few spots where I caught a fold in the ruffle.  Then I flipped it right-side out, gave it a press, and top stitched the opening shut.  

Then it went on the longarm.  I wouldn't recommend putting a piece on any larger than this that already has all the layers stitched together like this.  That's because once it's on the rollers, it pulls the layers like a rolled up magazine--unevenly.  I didn't have any issues with it, but it was on the verge of being a problem.  So keep it under a yard when doing this!

Anyway, I quilted a girly flowery, swirly, leafy design on the pink one.  Best of luck with the twins Cathy!

Maddy's scrappy color blocks baby quilt

 

 

Little Madisen finally got her baby quilt last month.  She's 6 months old now, but better late than never!  But it was the first time I got to see her in person.  She's my cousin's little girl.  She has 2 older brothers, so she needed a bit of girlyness with a quilt!  I went with purple and greens.  And then added just enough pink to make it girly.  But not too girly. 

 

 

 

Now, if you have been following my little blog for a while, you have seen me make similar quilts before.  Maybe a dozen or so!  If you are kinda new around here- this is what I do.  I sort my little scraps into shoe boxes by color and they all live in a dresser drawer in my sewing space.  Every so often (when a box gets full and i can't hardly shut the drawer anymore for instance.  Or when I'm between projects and need something to sew on.)  I will get out a box and start randomly sewing scraps together to make a 10" block.  Then the blocks get thrown in another drawer and wait to be made into a baby quilt.  I did a recent block count--somewhere around 35 blocks!  Umm.  Better start doing something with them!

 

I like to quilt something different in each block.

 

It's hard to fit 5 improv letters into a 10" square. 

Note to self:  Stick with just their initials.  Or even better- just the first letter of their first name. 

 

I could sit there and look at all the different fabrics in there for hours.  I used flannel scraps for the backing.  I saw this Flying Dutchman tutorial from V and Co. and thought I could make HST units out of my blocks and make something similar.  I might try that next time.  I think it's time to change it up a little bit.

Teresa's Science Fair Quilt

 

 

Teresa bought this kit at the AQS show a couple months ago and had it together in record time!  She sent me a few quilting ideas, but still left it up to me as to how to quilt it.  She liked a geometric/flower design, and how someone else's version quilted the negative space like it was a block.  A "ghost" block if you will.

 

Hmm.  OK.  I did a little more Internet image searching for ideas and came up with a bunch.  But I narrowed it down to 2 that I thought I could handle and loaded her up!

 

I just love how it turned out! 

(so I took lots of pictures!)

 

There's no real rhyme or reason as to what design went where.  (or IS there??  ha ha)  But I did more of the flower design since I was pretty confident she would like that design for sure. 

 

The angled edges were kinda tricky, but not too bad.  I pinned them down, then basted the edge with my longest stitch-  keeping it within a quarter inch from the edge.  That should help keep things together with attaching the binding too.

 

I used a silver colored Aurifil thread throughout the quilt.

 

I really enjoyed quilting this one Teresa! 

Emily's Urban Birthday/Wedding Quilt

 

This is another family-made quilt for my cousin Emily's wedding gift.  The pattern is Urban Birthday using Jenny's Quick Curve Ruler.  It went together so fast and easy! 

 

 

 

This was my Mom's quilting design.  She had made this pattern once before and quilted it herself on her domestic machine and wanted to see how much better it would look if I quilted it the same way.  ha ha.  However, I never saw the quilt before she gifted it and there is no photographic evidence of it, so we will never really know for sure who "quilted it best"! 

 The wedding was a couple weeks ago.  It was a beautiful wedding with a beautiful Bride.  I hope she loves the quilt and that it keeps her and her new hubby warm and snuggly for many years to come!

 

 

Here is the back.  The fabric is called Wrenley. 

 

 

 

Countdown to Christmas QAL--My advent calendar

 

Here it is!  My advent calendar I made with the Countdown to Christmas QAL.  I think it turned out so cute.  It helps when you really like the fabrics you used.  'In from the cold' charm pack plus a fabric sample of another cute fabric line--I can't remember what it was called, but it had the Santa, little cardinals, and the words all in it. 

 

 

I added another pocket for Christmas day.  It made sense to me, but apparently it's against the norm when it comes to Advent calendars.  That's just how I roll.  I guess!  That pocket is a special shimmery gold fabric. 

 

I did pebble quilting, but added a feathered cross.  For us, that is the reason for the season!  As for the pockets, I am copying several of Janice's activity-based ideas, along with a few little books and prizes I found at the Target dollar bin.  And there will be chocolate in there too!  My kiddo is not quite 2, so I want to keep it fun for the whole family, but not too candy-focused.  The kid is still demanding he have his Halloween candy- which is pretty much gone except for the things that are too hard for him to eat.  We kept it "hidden" on top of the fridge, but he knows it's there and points to it and whines "tanny!!"  I hope the calendar doesn't encourage the same behavior.  We'll see!

 

For the numbers, I used the font Plantagenet Cherokee in size 225 and bold. I just printed out 0-9 and cut them out and traced them (backwards) onto the backside my felt which I had ironed on my fusible webbing. Then, I just cut them out-very carefully- and ironed them on. I considered stitching around them, but decided I could get by without the extra effort. I can always hand stitch around them later if I really wanted to. Or glue them down if they come off. I figured it's only getting 'used' for 25 days out of the year, it won't get worn out too quickly...

 

I found this striped binding at my LQS.  I had to do a Google search to figure out how to cut it on the bias.  It was pretty simple to do.  Thanks to Janice and Melissa for organizing this QAL.  I'm so glad I participated.  One item on my holiday bucket list is forever crossed off!

 

And here are my November blocks for my do. Good Stitches group.  This block is called Arkansas Traveler. 

Star Value--Do. Good Stitches Haven Group Quilt

It's finished!  This is the September quilt for my Do. Good Stitches Haven group.  I had each member make a block from Melissa's Star Value tutorial.  Yep, it's all made from one block!  

First of all- I'm so jealous of everyone else's fabrics!  There are lots of neat and vibrant colors and prints in here.  You could sit under it for hours looking at each one.  

And I must say that everyone did such a great job piecing.  I only had maybe a couple spots where I had trouble matching corners.  That's pretty good for having 10 different people working on a project!

As you can see- I had fun custom quilting it too!  In each star is a geometric design.  Each gray diamond is zig-zag meandered around and inside is a loop design.  Then in the light area I kept it simple with a meander and a flower here and there in the larger areas.  

The label.  We have fancy custom printed labels to put on our quilts.  The binding fabric I bought on a whim on a "end of the bolt" sale.  I knew it would make great binding fabric and looked the best with this quilt out of all the other fabrics I auditioned.  

I'm going to hate to see this quilt go.  I really love it.  And some friends who saw me working on it loved it too and wanted the link to the pattern.  

The back is a vintage sheet I had picked up at a yard sale this summer.  It was a bit of a buggar to hand bind through this thing.  I had to come up with a make-shift leather thimble--a piece from an old purse I had laying around.  (See that's why you keep junk like that around!)  That helped out a lot, but it still took longer than usual to get it bound.  

Ooh. 

Pretty!

I want to give a special Big Thanks to Jessica who helped me finish this quilt.  This quilt is going to a Women's Shelter in Rochester New York.  I hope whoever is the recipient loves this quilt as much as I do!

Linking up to Finish it Friday.  

A Quilt For Teresa

 

This quilt has a bit of a story behind it.  It was made by my Mom, sister and me for our friend Teresa.  You see, she willingly hosts all of us for sewing weekends and feeds us too.  She has a great home with plenty of bedrooms and a large sewing space where we can spread out and take over the place.  And since my family is spread across the state, her house is a great central location for all of us to meet at.  She also likes giving away her scraps from her overflowing bin.  We thought it would be funny to make a quilt out of all the scraps she has given us.  So we did! 

 

It's actually not 100% all her fabric, we had to make several additions from our own stashes.  It might actually be more like 50%...  The pattern is from a magazine.  Maybe Fons and Porter, I can't remember.  We used a packet of Thangles to make the HST, which worked out pretty slick! 

 

And I did another all-over spineless funky feather on it! 

 

A quilt back in the sun.  I'm pretty sure Teresa loves it!  Thanks for being such an excellent hostess!  Now, when are you going to have us over again?!

NCAA Women's Final 4 T-shirt quilt

 

This is the first in a 3 part T-shirt quilt series from Gloria.  Every year for the past several years her and her daughters make a voyage to the Women's College Basketball Final Four tournament.  The past few years they made a point to each get a shirt for each team in order to eventually make quilts out of them.  Gloria has finally acquired enough shirts, so they will each get a quilt this year for Christmas.  How neat!  She even made one block with pictures of them all on it.  (top left corner)

 

 

 

We decided to go with an all-over design and go around each shirt design customary.

 

 

Since this print was more of a funky vibe, I did swirls and triangles with a star here and there.

 

I have already completed the other two quilts she made, but since my camera died, I didn't get any pictures of them. :(  Oh well.  Some of the shirts were the same, but she used different fabrics for the borders and sashings.  Thanks for having me quilt your special gifts Gloria!