Auntie and Grandma Baby Quilts

I decided to make a quilt for my best friend, Erin, who just became an auntie! I love being an auntie and am so excited for her to become one! This is a baby quilt she can keep at her house.

This pattern is a Dutch Pinwheel and I played around with the sizing before I started so I could make big 20 inch blocks. Since I used 4 prints in each block and needed 4 HSTs of each, starting out with the 4 at a time Half Square Triangle method was perfect! In this method you do the math for your finished block to find your starting square size' (If anyone wants the formula I can look it up, it's in a book in my room somewhere). Take your two different fabrics in the starting square size, put them right sides together and stitch around all four sides. Cut on the diagonals and you have 4 HSTs that you can then trim down to the exact size needed.

When I was finishing the quilt up I happened to find this argyle fabric in the clearance room at Fabric Depot that worked perfectly for the backing!

And I've been loving black and white stripes for binding lately, such a fun contrast to the bright colors I like to use!

I gifted this quilt to my friend a couple weeks ago, here it is all wrapped up in ribbon, ready to go!

Your keen eye may have noticed there are 2 quilts there. Well, while I was at it I made a quilt for the new Grandma as well! My mom received a few quilts and other baby blankets when she became a grandma and I know how special those are to her, so I thought Reggie should have one too.

I made a "new Grandma" quilt for my best friend's mom, who just became a grandma. I also made one for my best friend since she is a new aunt!

I just did some simple modern cross blocks and used an Essex Linen for the background. I really wanted the blocks offset and at first was going to add in some half sized blocks (rectangles) on the ends to make it an offset rectangular quilt, but I couldn't decide. I went to Instagram with my two designs and this one was overwhelmingly the winner. I love the partial pink blocks!

I did a fun free motion quilting pattern that my friend Rachel came up with that is like beads on a string. You sew straight for a few inches and then go around in a circle about 3 times and then continue a few more inches. Each row is slightly offset from the row before as to where the beads go. Not sure if you can see it at all though, my camera broke and I can't get any decent pics from my stupid phone.

I used one of my favorite Patty Young prints on the back. I've said it before, but you can definitely tell how much I like someone by which fabric I'm willing to use on them. I like Reggie quite a bit. Luckily, a few days after I used this up I found some more in the pink colorway on clearance.  Yay! Some yellow polka dots for binding and I was good to go.

And, in case you're like, um, how about making a quilt for the actual baby/Mom? I did do that, I promise! That was my Offset Arrows Quilt I did a while back (in time for the baby shower in fact, and that's always a feat to be proud of!)

Vintage Boho Star Baby Quilt

I made this baby quilt for a friend from a Moda Bake Shop pattern. It's meant to be a lap quilt and should have a charm square border, but it's already pretty huge for a baby quilt so I didn't really want the extra 10 inches on width and height. The border is pretty cute though, so it was a hard decision to make.

I started with a charm pack of the Little Red Riding Hood fabric from Riley Blake and some yardage from the same line, plus other prints that I liked. I had to buy a good amount of red since I apparently don't use it that much!

The basic design is making a 9 patch, then turning it into a giant half square triangle with a square of a solid. I miscounted and had two extra 9 patches (D'oh!) so I used them on the back.

I also pieced a mini boho star on the back to mimic the front, and then just kind of filled in the rest with some of the other cuts of fabric from the front and others that worked.

I love using diagonal stripes on bidning and love that this line had diagonal stripes. I bought extra to use on a few more quilts too, since I use gray quite a bit. I know I could make bias diagonal stripes from any stripe...but I'm too lazy to make bias binding!

Offset Arrows Baby Quilt

This is a baby quilt for my best friend's niece! She is due in January and will be the first grandbaby, so everyone is very excited. The baby shower was last weekend so I can finally show this! I designed it using the Threadbias Design tool and it was really fun to use (although a bit of a learning curve). I've seen lots of arrow quilts, but none of them were offset and that's what I really wanted. This is just made up of simple rectangles and half square triangles.

The baby's crib set is black and cream and the mom wanted to add in pink and green. As soon as I heard that, I thought of the Comma line of fabric by Zen Chic. I'd been wanting to use that, so this was a great excuse! The colors in the line were orange, yellow, and a brighter green, so I opted to just use the black and cream prints and add in some solid Kona cotton--Bubble Gum and Tarragon are the shades.

I pieced the back from leftovers from the front. I had already run to the store twice for fabric (which is what happens when you buy fabric before you nail down your design!) so when I ran a little short I definitely didn't want to make a third trip. I made it work with a small strip of solid Kona black. You can see the quilting best here. I did quilting in the ditch down the length and width of the squares, and then did double diagonal lines in just one direction.

The cool thing about designing in Threadbias is that they have tons of actual fabric lines in their database, so in my digital mockup I could put the actual fabric, instead of just a solid color. This is what my mockup looked like:

And this is the original I designed with Allyssa Thomas' line of Critter Patch fabric. It's fun to see how different a pattern can be with different fabrics.

Here is the blank pattern if anyone wants to make their own, I found it easiest after filling it in, to name each color A, B, etc and then just make a chart of how many rectangles and half square triangles I need to make of each one. The rectangles were 7.5 x 4 (I believe) and the half square triangles started at 5 inches and were trimmed down to 4 inches after being made. I can double check my measurements if anyone is interested in making this pattern. With these measurements and amount of rows and columns it's a decent sized baby quilt, I want to say about 42 inches square?

X's and O's Baby Quilt

I finished this quilt last month for a good friend's baby girl, and finally gave it to her today! I'm really pleased with how it turned out, initially I had started working on my own design of something different but I got this in my head and couldn't let go. When she first told me her nursery scheme, I was a bit stumped, but after finding a couple cute purple and brown prints and filling the rest in with more monotone fabric, I grew to really love the combo!

Sadly my camera died and I only had my 5 and 7 yo nephews to hold the quilt up, so these are the best pics I have right now.

Just the top:

I used the idea and block size/construction hints from this blog post:

http://kelbysews.blogspot.com/2013/05/gifts-leftovers-requests-and-progress.html

A "Sweet" Baby Quilt

I've been a moderator over at Craftster.org for a few years, and I love making baby quilts when my mod friends have babies! I was really excited to make a baby quilt for sweets4ever’s new baby, and when she told me the color scheme for her nursery it seemed like fate. I had just completed the Quilt Block Swap Round 2, and the color schemes I had asked for two of my groups had the same color scheme as sweets’ nursery! For that particular swap, you pick a pattern and color scheme and receive 3 blocks from each person in a 5 person group. 12 blocks is about lap quilt sized, and I happened to be in 3 groups! I used 15 blocks from that two different groups of that swap but I still have quite a few left!

I picked all the blocks that I felt had the right colors and worked together well.  The pinwheel blocks weren’t as big as the wonky log cabin blocks, so I framed them out in light gray and then pieced them together.

 I had more blocks I wanted to use than could fit on the front, so I put them on the back. The back is almost another front! I improv pieced the back, and included a section leftover from the quilt I had just made a former mod, retroeva! It's the long blue rectangle in the left column and the squares underneath it of gray chevron, orange deer, and light gray.  I’m really excited that this quilt has blocks from lots of different Craftsters, and from Eva’s quilt. You can see blocks from alwaysinmyroom, Donniesgirl, sloth003, homerof2, and waggonswest. If I'm forgetting anyone, please let me know!

I think here, on the back, you can see the quilting the best. I did wavy diagonal criss-crossing lines inspired by some quilting my friend Jen has been doing.

For the binding I cut into some Orange Painter's Canvas from Laura Gunn, my favorite fabric designer! I like the pop of color it gives to the edges.

I am entering this quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Woven Block Baby Quilt

A good friend of mine from way back when and his wife just had their first baby. And it's a girl! Squee! Everyone seems to be having boys lately, and I was excited to get my pink on! I used part of a jelly roll on it that I had previously used (in conjunction with a matching charm square pack) on this quilt.

I used this free pattern from Moda Bake Shop for the blocks, only made 9 of them, and then put a small border around it to bring it out to about 40 inches square.

For the back I pieced a few lengths of fabric together, then split them, rotated, and inserted a column of blocks I made with the various leftover fabrics--I was excited when I found a few of the charm blocks left over from the last project! Some pink polka dot binding and I was good to go!

Catching Up!

Just when I started to get into the rhythm of blogging a little more regularly, boom, nothing for two months! Oh well, you do what you can, right? :) The last couple months have been so busy! I'm now the Vice President of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild, and my duties include keeping up on all of our social media, including the blog, flickr, facebook--along with monthly guild and officer's meeting, helping to plan the following month's meetings, Sew Days and other events!

Besides my guild duties I've been busy sewing up a storm (why is everyone having babies at the same time? Spread 'em out, people!), planning vacations for the year, doing lots of yummy low-carb cooking, and you know, working my two part-time jobs. Also, a friend and I started a Sewing Circle a few months back, so there is usually one night a month we get together to sew. We've been having a lot of fun hosting those, sometimes we get a lot of work done, and sometimes it's more about good conversation and laughter!

Here are a few of the projects I've been working on lately~

I started making a quilt for my mom for Christmas a few months ago...well I didn't finish it in time for Christmas, but I was able to give her a quilt top for Christmas...just like I did with my boyfriend last year! Maybe that's going to be my thing, a Christmas quilt top :)  I did manage to finish this before January was over though! I switched up a few blocks here and there from the original pattern. The pattern, by the way, was in a book that I was generously given by Angela from Cut to Pieces when she was clearing out some of her craft books and offered them up for grabs on her blog. Thanks so much, Angela!

I made this giant block baby quilt for my friend Eva. The quilt I made for her first baby was only my second quilt ever! It was fun making this one, thinking about how far I've come in a few years with my quilting and what I do differently now!

  This project was a mini quilt I made for a personal swap with a friend. I love the paper pieced block!

I'm currently working on some more fun projects, baby quilts plus a few other things, so I will post those as soon as I am able (ie, after the recipients have them in their hot little hands!).

Double Baby Quilts

My cousin recently had a baby and I loved her color scheme--red, black, white, and gray! I lucked onto a boxed set of Michael Miller First Sight fabric that came with Fat Quarters, a cute panel, ribbons, a board book, and patterns for a great price. Since it's slightly quirky fabric, I checked with my cousin first before I got it, but she loved it so I got it and got to working!

After a loooooot of work, I had this quilt top completed~

It's the Mod Mosaic Tutorial and I love the results! But, when I looked at the results I realized I hadn't really used up very much of the cute fabric I had bought.

So I started a second quilt top before I basted, quilt or bound the first. I had a fairly simple but striking half square triangle quilt pinned to Pinterest for awhile, so I started to make HSTs. And I made them, and made them, and revised my plan a few times to include some solid red squares in each block....and then I decided to include some solid gray large squares in the overall pattern.

I finished the half square triangle quilt on a trip up to Discovery Bay with some crafty friends, my fellow Craftster mod LimeRiot and my guild buddy Britney! Crafting is always more fun with other people...and alcohol :)