Premie Baby Pants

So my sister had a little boy a few weeks ago.  Born just past 32 weeks and weighed a little under 4 lbs.  Baby and mom are both doing really well! 

I had a hard time finding premie baby clothes, so I found a pair of 0-3 month pants and used them as a pattern to make these out of a couple old T-shirts.  I  made them a bit smaller and made the legs longer and enclosed the feet.  (Which I realize you can't see in my picture)  I have no idea how well they will fit him, but I think they will fit better than the 0-3 month pants. 

I used the bottom hem of the shirt as the top, so all I had to do was rip out an inch or so to sew up my side seams so it wouldn't be sewn closed.  Then thread your elastic through the pre-exhisting casing.  Top stitch all around the bottom of the elastic to close it all up.  Easy! 

For the little decorations I just used some HeatNBond to iron them on, then top stitched about 1/8 of an inch around the edge.

That is the back of the football pair.  He's a big Chicago Bears fan.  :)

Linking up to Sew Modern Monday--Check it out!

A couple quilts from Karen

I met up with Karen at the AQS show a few weeks ago to hand off these two lovely quilts.

This pattern is called Synchronized Squares.  You can read Karen's post here.

Since the blocks have raw edges I quilted a flower in each block.  With loops in between. 

She even had a few extra blocks for the back.  I somehow managed to line up the blocks on the back with the ones on the front so the quilted flowers matched up.

And she made this throw with Christmas fabrics. And you can see Karen's post on this quilt here. 

Free-motion feathers!

Thanks for having me quilt your quilts once again Karen!

Joan's Jelly Roll quilt

This is Joan's quilt made from a Jelly roll.  Pretty cool pattern huh?  (#36)

I quilted the same design as the last quilt, Mt. Hood.

Hexie and Alphabet projects update

Do you remember back in the beginning of the year when I started working on these hexagons?  No?  Well the post about it is here.  And this is my progress so far.  I just laid out the "flowers" to see how big it is.  So far only only about 5 or 6 flowers are actually connected together.  But I think I am going to make this tree wall hanging for Baby's room with them. 

Hmm, after just re-visiting my inspiration pic, I am thinking that my treetop is pretty huge.  It may need some pruning to scale it down. 

And here is my alphabet so far.  Only a few letters left!  I think I might re-do the 'N' because

1) it looks more like an 'H' and

2) I accidentally used the same fabric as the 'A'.  I can't have that! 

AQS Show success and #35

Well the AQS Show last week was a success!  I learned a lot from my classes from Sue Patten and looked at a ton of awesome and inspiring quilts.  I tried out longarm machines (more about that later) and I met up with Karen who passed off a couple quilt tops for me to quilt.  I took lots of pictures of amazing quilts, but then realized that I needed permission from the quilter to post them on my blog, so ummm no pictures here.  But if you mention it in a comment, I will be happy to send you some via e-mail! 

This was the Des Moines Quilt Guild Show that was in the Wells Fargo Arena. 

A lot of these quilts could very well have been included in the AQS show, they are that good.  There were a few I recognized that were entered in the Iowa State Fair this year too.



This one is called "Mt. Hood".  It uses 5" squares.  A lot of them!  My sister made this one looooong ago (like maybe almost 10 years), and now it's finally finished!  (Got that binding sewn on yet Sis?)

The quilting design was my free-hand attempt of this pantograph. 

Talk about a pieced back!  And this was quilt #35.

A couple more quilts and going to AQS Show!

Quilt #33 for the year was this scrappy 16-patch.

Meandering was requested.  No problemo.

This cozy throw is all flannels.  (#34)

I had free reign on this one so I went with the floral theme and did 5-petal flowers and leaves. 

There was a slight problem with this one.  As I got to the last pass I realized that the back was baaaarely long enough, if not a tad short by 1/4 to 1/2 inch.  Oof.  What do I do??  Rip it all out and start over easing the top in better?  Stretch the heck out of the back to make it fit?  Trim 1/4 inch off the entire edge of the quilt?  Noo way.  After consulting with my customer we decided to take it off  the machine and luckily she had plenty of purple flannel left to sew a strip on the back.  And it was no problem to put it back on and finish the last pass.  Phew!  It all worked out, but I hope I never let it happen again.  I always do lay out my quilts to make sure the backs and battings are large enough and oriented the right way, but somehow I neglected to notice how close this one was.  Lesson learned. 

**Also**

I know there is a lot of blogging going on about the Sewing Summit coming up, which I will not be attending.  But I WILL be attending the AQS Show in Des Moines later this week!!  Planning on taking a couple longarm classes from Sue Patten, looking at lots of gorgeous quilts, trying out all the new longarm machines, and maybe just a little shopping too.  But not too much shopping.  :) 

Anyone else going??

A special announcement and a new project!

This is my latest sewing project that I am pretty excited about.  But first of all- I think it could be time to announce an exciting development that I have been reluctant to post about.  And that would be that my husband and I are expecting our first child in January!!  We are very excited!  And it's a boy which we are very happy about-especially the hubs.  YAY!  So instead of sewing and quilting, I've been napping and reading up on pregnancy, birthing, newborn care, and baby names.  I have found that there is a lot to learn!

So now, of course, I needed to start in on a baby quilt.  In the July/August '11 issue of Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting magazine an alphabet quilt was featured in the "This Old Quilt" section.  Hmm, that's a neat idea I thought, an alphabet quilt!  I Googled alphabet quilt images and found THIS.  Go ahead and look at it.  It is awesome!  Loooooove it!!

The original wonky letters blogger wrote a book about them, which looks very cool,  but I decided to just wing it and see what happens.  I printed out my inspiration picture to help me mentally break down each letter and figure out what letter parts need to be sewn first.  I started out with the "I" and worked my way up to the "W".  So far the "W" has been the trickiest for me.

The only rule I have is that each letter is 4.5 inches tall.  I am going to have 3 orange letters.  Why 3? Because isn't that how designers create interest-by using groups of odd numbers??  I couldn't decide on just 1 orange fabric, and 5 would just be too many, so I used 3.  And orange because it contrasts nicely with the rest of the letters in blues (opposites on the color wheel) and greens.   See- I was paying attention in art class!  And orange also because it's a boy color.  (There is such a thing as boy and girl colors you know. At least that's what I thought when I was 6!)  

This will become a wall hanging for the baby's room, which is currently painted in pink and lavender with a princess ballerina border from the previous homeowners...  That will have to change soon. 

Wow, this is a pretty wordy post-for me.  Anyway, that's what I've REALLY been up to this summer!

#32- A Scrap Quilt

Carol made this super scrappy quilt.  She puts together the neatest scrap quilts!  Each square measures 2 inches finished. 

Just a simple medium meander on this one.  This is the 32nd quilt I've quilted this year.  I'm a good 3 weeks behind my goal of a quilt a week.  ack.  Time to get busy! 

Another Ticker-Tape doll quilt and a Quilt for a Sports Fan

I made another Ticker Tape Quilt.  I've lost count on how many of these I've made as gifts.  They are always a hit though!  This will be linked up to fellow Iowan Megan's blog: Canoe Ridge Creations- for Sew Modern Monday.  Check out the much cooler things other people made!

This was my latest quilting finish- A Sports-themed quilt!  This was my first attempt with quilting a sports motif. 

I quilted footballs, basketballs, baseballs, lots of stars and loops. 

And then I also threw in some sports-themed words like: champion, touchdown, overtime, goal, and so on.  I think quilting out words is a lot easier than making recognizable footballs and basketballs.  This was quilt #31 for the year.

Summertime Row Quilt

This quilt has a bit of a story behind it.  One day my mom, sister and I thought it would be fun to do a row exchange where each person involved makes a row, then each month passes it on to the next person on the list.  They add a row to it, and pass it onto the next lady and so on.  Then at the end of it all you get all your rows back and -surprise!  Look at what everyone made for you! 

So we duped some friends and relations into joining in.  8 of us in all.  Each person had a bit of a theme.  One had Christmas, another 4th of July, one had a little girl theme, another was countries they had traveled to...  A couple of us sent fabric they wanted us to use, others said use whatever you have that will go with. 

 Aunt Diane's theme was Summer.  I had fun custom quilting each row. 

Of course I had to do a row of feathers :)

This row is the coolest!

This row had a swirling water theme.



This was the row I did- Flip Flops!  It's not summertime unless you've got on some flip-flops. 

This was a lot of fun to receive a new set of rows to work with each month and see what the quilters did previously.  But it was also challenging to come up with a block to go with the theme.  I'm really glad we did it, but I don't think we will be doing it again anytime soon! 

My  row quilt is still in rows in a box.  Maybe this winter I will figure out how I want to put it all together.  Maybe...