a quilt for baby Hazel

Hazel's quilt

My good friend RaeLyn had her 5th baby last month.  I’m so hit or miss with baby gifts– sometimes not getting them done until the baby is 8 months old, or 1 year old, but this time I delivered the gift to a 3 week old baby!  Pretty good, huh?

up close

I love the painterly style of Laura Gunn’s fabrics.  You can tell they’re made straight from her paintings with the texture of the paint and canvas right there on the fabric.  I’ve had a half yard of these two prints staring at me from a shelf for a LONG time and finally had the right idea coincide with the right time to make a quilt, so I cut into it.

a quilt for baby Hazel

I had a fun time with my design– making the border echo the shape of the blocks.  I quilted the middle part in swirls and then went around the outside a few times with straight lines.  I really like how it turned out.  It’s especially fun to sew for someone you know will appreciate the thought and time and be just as giddy about the pretty fabric as I am.

Hazel's quilt back

The back is another Laura Gunn print– lots of dots in the perfect colors.

Baby quilts are such a good size to play with and FINISH.  I need to find some fabric I love to make a few for this little girl kicking my ribs.

quilt work

sewing squares

With the anticipation of our new little girl we’ve been scheming how we’re going to rearrange bedrooms, acquire the needed furniture and all that.  Once she’s 4 or 5 months old Eva will get to move in with Brenna.  Right now Brenna has a full size bed, a dresser, and a desk in her room with absolutely no room to add a crib,  and the crib is still being used by our climbing monkey of a two year old.  The solution I’ve dreamed up is that we’ll make a twin over full bunk bed for Hunter and Ian and a twin size loft bed for Brenna.  That way we won’t have to buy any new mattresses.

To get ready for a new bed we naturally decided that some quilt making was in order.  Brenna and I browsed simple quilt patterns and fabric together and I gave her full creative license.  The only stipulation I made was that whatever pattern she chose needed to be simple enough that she could sew the blocks with minimal help from me.  She chose the Juice Boxes pattern from Cluck Cluck Sew and a smattering of fabrics from Amy Butler’s Soul Blossoms collection.  I modified the pattern just a bit.   Since it was for 6 inch squares she would have needed to make 150 or so of them– so we enlarged it to 12 inch squares.  48 of those were much more doable.  I did the cutting, she did all the sewing of the blocks, I did most of the pressing, and then I trued them up.  It took a couple of months, but the blocks are done!

a stack of squares

the layout

I’ve actually got the top all pieced together and the back made too.  I was hoping to have it done for her birthday on Monday (11 years!!), but I don’t think getting it basted and quilted by then is very realistic seeing that I do have to do school, clothe, and feed people.  We’ve got a good start, though!  And great memories of collaboration will be harbored in the finished product forever.

some nest-feathering, but with pillows

I’ve been having fun redecorating the family room walls, but I’m not quite ready to take pictures of it all and say I’m done.   I decided today that I need to do something different in my fireplace mantel/ cubby thing so I’ve been looking for inspiring mantel arrangements and dreaming up what I could do with what I already have instead of the family photos that have been there for a year and a half.  (And, to be honest taking photos of just one corner of the room is much easier because I can keep the baskets of unfolded laundry and explosion of k-nex behind me.)

new pillow and wall quotes

What I can say is done is the sewing of these pillows and some quotes to hang on the wall.  I have a friend who had a pretty quote printed as a photo at Costco, framed it, and gave it to me for Christmas– and I thought it was genius!  So, I took some sayings I’ve wanted displayed in my house somehow, made them into big images using Inkscape (which is kind of like Adobe Illustrator, but free), printed them as photos at Costco, and framed them.  They’ve been done for a while.  I just decided they should go here.

new wall quotes

The top one is from Doctrine and Covenants 29:34 where the Lord says “All things unto me are spiritual.”  It’s a good reminder when I’m cooking dinner, picking up toys, helping with math, ignoring laundry that even all the mundane things that need my attention have a purpose–  they’re spiritual.  The second is a quote from Charlotte Mason that says “Education is the atmosphere we breathe, the envelope of wonder that surrounds us, held by the gravity of our daily habits.”

The 2 colorful pillows were so fun for me to make.  They’re basically 4 little quilts, pieced and quilted and turned into pillows.  Here’s one side of the first one:

one side of pillow #1

I used the Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow fat quarters I had been saving to make another quilt like this.  I never was really going to get around to making that quilt, and I decided this is a much better way to enjoy the fabric anyway.

another side of pillow #1

This is the other side.

swirly quilting

I got a little crazier with the second pillow.

another side of pillow #2

This one is just quilted with straight lines.

one side of pillow #2

I loved making these because I got to do everything involved in making a quilt, but on a much more immediate, instant gratification scale– and I can see and enjoy them every day.

I also used some home decorator weight fabric I had in my stash to add one plain pillow.  It took all of 20 minutes (invisible zipper and all).

the brown pillow

Here’s all 3 again in a different corner:

all 3

Obviously these are usually on the floor being jumped on or laid on, but they looked pretty here for a little while.   I’m hoping at some point this year I can get a few Rollie Pollies made for jumping and rolling and reading.  We’ll see.  I probably really should be replenishing my supply of baby girl things– and will probably be more excited about doing that as the days go on.

So, anyone have some favorite mantel photos they want to send me links too?  Feel free to leave them in the comments!

making headway on the hexagons

This is the first project I started working on in my craft space here in Colorado 2 1/2 years ago.

basting the hexagons

It’s one of those projects that has been percolating in my mind for a very, very long time.  I fell in love with the plaid Moda silky fabric when I lived in Ohio and came home with several half yards of it.  It was neatly folded on a shelf so I could admire it and dream up just the thing to do with it.  I decided to add some plain natural linen to the stack, then some solid brown linen joined in.  Once we had moved here I had settled on this hexagon pattern made of triangles because the directional plaids and stripes would make it so fun.  As I pieced the long strips, cut them into triangles, and then into half hexagons I would run out of linen and run out to find another fabric to add.

basting with help

The top has been finished for quite awhile– completed on one of my sewing dates with my good friend RaeLyn.  It’s just been folded up sitting under my drafting table waiting for me to get with it and find some fabric for the back.  Well, I did– and the perfect binding fabric too.  Ian helped me open safety pins as I basted the layers while Ellie guarded.

Now for the quilting.  I think it’ll take me a lot less time than piecing it did.

Walking foot, here I come!