Sabrina's Quilt - Finished!

This quilt has been finished for almost two months - but I just haven't taken any decent pictures of it. Winter in Chicago is so terrible for photography! 

I'm hoping to get this quilt to baby Sabrina soon - as she's totally a toddler already. :) Such is life. 

The official title of this quilt is the Giant Hoo-Ha quilt. I used the general instructions that came with the Quick Curve Ruler. I love this ruler, but it just seems that I don't have the time to use it. One of these days... I do love the ruler though. 

More about this quilt can be found here. 

Project Night Night - String Quilt

This winter my guild has set to work making quilts and stuffed animals for an organization called Project Night Night. Project night night gives tote bags filled with a quilt, a stuffed animal, and a story book to children as they enter homeless shelters. Their hope is to provide some consistency and comfort for these kids. 

Emily and I with our donation quilts.

Our guild managed to fill nearly 50 tote bags for Project Night Night!! 

I pulled out this old (OLD) quilt top to finish up for Project Night Night. I doubt anyone remembers this quilt from the blog (read about it here) Hello, project started in January of 2010! LOL! Well it was going to be a big quilt but I lost interest. I'm glad I took the excuse of this service project to pull it out and give it a fulfilling life in the arms of a child!

The quilt finished at about 36" x 45" and I quilted it with a meandering stipple (with a few hearts and stars included). I used Pellon Legacy Batting in 100% Polyester (left over from a little project). This was my first time free motion quilting using poly batting. It was pretty interesting! I had no problems with the batting at all, but it was surprising as I quilted because it's poofy-er than the cotton. Considering the poofyness added with all those bias seams on the string blocks I expected to have more issues with quilting it - but it really was no big deal. :) I quilted it using Aurifil - that spool of thread lasted SO LONG! 

I'm glad this little one has made it out of my WIP pile of shame and into the arms of a kid in need!

For a bit more about the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild's meeting check out my post over on the guild blog!

Instructions for those receiving a handmade quilt:

1) Put baby on it.

2) Take a picture to send to me.

3) Repeat daily.

I can't say this enough - my quilts are made to be used! Thanks Ruthie for really letting Chloe get some use out of this one! 

(more info about Chloe's bubble quilt here)

Allie's Quilt - Revisited

I see this image several times a week, when Allie lays her quilt out on the floor and gauges her current foot size against the size at about 6 months. :)

As you can see, there's quite a difference! She's growing up so quickly! Pretty soon she'll need a bigger quilt!

Adorable right? If this is the first time you've seen this quilt go ahead and read about it here.

A Good Mail Day!!

Hawthorne Threads never fails to amaze me. While they may not tie their bundles up with pretty scraps of fabric like Sew Mama Sew does, they do ALWAYS ship in a timely manner! I ordered this fabric about two and a half days ago - using the generic cheapest mailing method. And here it is!

Merry Christmas to me! Thanks to my lovely husband who gave me a one size fits all gift certificate! I bought this  lovely FQ bundle of Joel Dewberry Heirloom. It will be used for my month (Feb) of the {Sew} Beautiful Bee. I'm really excited about it. 

I also got a bit more of my fav. print.

And a couple half yards of pretties that I just couldn't pass up. I can't remember what that blue one is, but it's so much prettier in real life and now I wish I'd bought a bit in each color. :)

This has nothing to do with this post but I have a serious desire to make some 3" sawtooth stars. Serious. After seeing this on flickr.

Also, I want to make something like this. Free pieced and wonderful. I've never tried the ringo-pie type pieced stuff. I'm a little intimidated but who knows? Maybe I'd be great at it!

Oh and I want to make one of these ModMood Quilts. If I could figure out how to make it miniature I would.

And... while we're daydreaming, I want to finish my Bee quilt from last year! Now!! :)  I just need to finish piecing the backing (I have about 1/4 of the backing left to finish)... then it's on to quilting that bad boy!

A quilt received finally!

About a week ago I finally got around to sending out my Fish Baby Quilt to it's recipient. Baby Joseph. He is the son of one of my dear friends, Alexandra. Alexandra and I met while serving the children of the Fargo ND   area by leading Catechesis camps one summer. Her prayer life is an inspiration to all who know her, and I knew with her artistic background she'd appreciate the non-traditional baby colors of this quilt.

As you can see by the sweet boy cuddling there, they've received the quilt now and I can stop worrying about it in the mail (and it cost much less than I thought it would to ship!). I've actually already received a very sweet thank you note from Joseph's parents. Too cute. I hope to be able to visit them soon -- they're only a few hours away! 

Here are some details about the quilt. I've already blogged a little bit about this quilt here. But since that post I'd added a little bit of embroidery to two of the corners. One corner has Joseph's last name embroidered. The other corner has the bible verse: 1 Samuel 1: 27 which roughly translates to "I have prayed for this child and the Lord has heard and answered me." A verse that is very close to my heart. I'm glad that it'll be well loved and used! 

Swoon Newborn Quilt.

About a two weeks ago my friend/co-worker had a sweet little baby girl. I think there's something about a newborn that makes people who are trying to conceive able to forgive/stop being angsty about a friend having been pregnant. Since of course we all know newborns cry a lot, and nursing is hard those first weeks, and the poop a lot... so who could possibly hate the parents of a newborn? lol. Ok so maybe in my head this quilt was about being a peace offering after being angsty about this friend having been pregnant when I wasn't. But whatever. lol.

Just when we heard the news that baby Mina was born, I had gotten a FQ of this gorgeous out of print Good Folks fabric in the mail (which then made me order two more yards of it!!). I couldn't resist pairing it with some Kona Curry for a more modern baby look. 

It's a fairly simple quilt, just the one block with a big border of white. I found the perfect grey polka-dot for the binding and quilted it up in just an hour or two! Perfection!! 

I free motion quilted the label. I think it turned out pretty awesome. It's all washed up now and ready to be delivered! Hopefully I'll no longer be sick later this week so we can stop by to visit baby Mina! 

Dreaming in tiny...

I've been dreaming up some tiny tiny piecing for my name badge to wear at the Sewing Summit. Now that we've got our class schedule I'm more than excited! It seems like it'll be October before we know it! Obviously if I want to have any quilted blocks on my name tag they'll have to be pretty small. I do small (if you haven't noticed), so I figured why not challenge myself to do smaller? Hense the tiny tiny stars. these two stars measure point-point at just under one inch! I'm even amazed at myself. I like the grey/yellow one best since I think the dots on the green one are too busy. I haven't decided yet what to do for my nametag but I'm sure it'll come to me. I might see if anyone at the next Chicago Modern Quilt Guild meeting would let me use the letter embroidery on their fancy machines. That'd be cool and would save me some tiny embroidery.

If you're interested in seeing my inspiration so far here's my name tag pinterest.

On to bigger things (it doesn't take much to get bigger than those!). Here's a baby quilt that I made up for a special friend of Wally's - he has a new baby that we wanted to welcome properly! This quilt is about 38" square and is bound by machine using my method (the first time I've used it on a larger piece). It worked out just fine and I'm a bit in love with that batik green dot - it came from Joann's! I might need to go back for more! This was made pretty simply and most of the fabric came right from my stash. It was completely sewn on my old White machine while Nancy was in the shop. It was inspired directly by this quilt. I've been wanting to make one of these for a while and I'm glad I did. It's fun and sweet and simple.

I'm just going to let you all know...

that as of right now I'm completely cought up in reading my blogs on google reader. Without deleting and clearing them out. :) That hasn't happened in a long time. I missed a few giveaway chances by being too late to enter them. That's lame.

On a more interesting note. I made a rainbow angel food cake (in a regular cake pan) today in preparation for Allie's upcoming 3rd birthday. It turned out amazing!! Very vibrant!

Allie was more interested in the blueberries with cool whip. Whatever. :) Gotta love a fruit loving kid!

Also in recent news, my cousin's baby is freaking adorable (especially when laying on her made by me quilt)! :)

CMQG meeting, etc...

Sunday was a busy sewing day! We had our July meeting of the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild. It was a sew-in which was pretty nice since most of us had hand work with us to do - it ended up being almost all of us around one table chatting and sewing. Sweet!

At the meeting we got to see everyone's mug rugs from the swap - it was pretty impressive! It was nice to get feedback about mine too. I'm always amazed when these ladies like my stuff... my style is much different than some of theirs and they've been at it for much longer than I. Such a great group! 

I decided to give away my "fish baby" quilt. My friend Alexandra is pregnant and due in a couple months... they're having a boy and that quilt is so cool and really boy-ish (as boy-ish as my quilts get). I did some bits of embroidery on it to make it a little bit more special for them.

At the meeting I had help from the other Emily - in choosing a binding fabric for my DQS11 quilt. Yes, I'm ready to bind it already! After the meeting I added a couple little borders of hand stitching too. I love it! :)

On a whim this evening (about...11:00pm?) my husband informed me that he accidentally told a friend that I was making their baby a quilt (I had made a little tag blanket and toy... but not a quilt...yet). So I decided to see what I could come up with on short notice (I don't really have a fabric stash... meaning I don't have many fabrics that I have even a full half yard of... let alone boy fabrics!). So I went with it. Thanks to my pinterest board for baby quilts I didn't have to think much before deciding on one to make. I finished the quilt top a bit ago... (took maybe an hour or so?).

One more point of business. I purchased some fabrics from our sale table at the guild meeting (everyone brings their cast offs and then we purchase fabrics that others didn't want - the proceeds go to the guild fund).. The fabrics were maybe considered "scraps" but I saw a use for them... I've bundled up part of them to be a little fat eighths bundle for you (a giveaway) and the rest are bundled for my niece for her birthday! More on that later - stay tuned!

Fish Baby Quilt - Finished!

I've finally finished this one... it has been a fun little project, but unfortunately one that nearly killed my sewing machine (you can get the whole store here and here.) I followed the tutorial from Sew Mama Sew; it came together perfectly (minus my machine issues). I fell for the quilt as soon as I saw the tutorial - I love square in square blocks! It was really a quick finish if you don't include the down time machine wise, and the fact that I procrastinated with the binding. 

See, I thought I might send this away to a beloved friend (who is -surprise surprise - pregnant all my friends are right?). I think she'd appreciate the colors and the coolness of this quilt, but at the same time I want to make something beautiful and intricate as I know she'd appreciate it. She doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl so these colors work well. But... I've pretty much fallen in love with the quilt, and I don't know that I can give it up. I have no use for it though since it's tiny (about 38" square if I recall correctly). I may keep it just because I love it. We'll see. I'd really like to have a baby to wrap up in it (have I mentioned that before?). lol. 

I am pretty lucky too, since this quilt was nearly free - the top is pieced almost entirely from the FQ bundle I won earlier this year from Michelle at I Like Orange, Too! (thanks Michelle!!!) I've been really lucky in the giveaway department this year! The solids are made by Free Spirit and they're lovely! I am pretty impressed with them.

That's about it... I'm a little too tired to be typing this up tonight... I may revise it tomorrow. 

Linking up for Fabric Tuesday at Quiltstory!

Blogger's Quilt Festival

It's that time again! Blogger's Quilt Festival! This time around I'm going to share with you Gia's Quilt. The plan for this quilt has been sitting in the back of my brain for a long time... and I didn't intend to be making it as a baby quilt for someone else... but that's how it worked.

First a little background. My cousin Chris met a girl (he's older than me... and has never really brought girls around... or really been around a lot himself), her name is Lizzie. Once Lizzie was part of the picture it was like suddenly there was my mature, cool, fun cousin Chris that we'd never really seen (no offense Chris). And Lizzie took to our family really quickly too - we love her! When they announced that she was pregnant I knew I had to make her baby a quilt (Chris' mom, my aunt Kathy has been pivotal in my crafting journey... it was fitting to make her first grandchild a quilt). I started off with a pretty basic idea, grey fabric, and some strips of various prints added among the grey... it sat on my design wall for months. It wasn't pretty enough - Lizzie had become more and more a part of our family and I think part of me felt that she deserved something sweet and pretty and gentle. So that's how I came to pour a lot of myself into this quilt.

Chris and Lizzie had found out that they were having a girl so I went with a light pink/grey/white color combo. I was a little disappointed in the lack of contrast in some of the blocks so I created a lot more variety in them than I originally planned. In all I love how it turned out.

Late night retreat photo - after quilting and getting the binding attached!

The other aspect of the making of this quilt is that it was almost entirely made during my very first quilting retreat. I had taken a plunge and signed up for the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild's retreat (although I had only been to one meeting) -- it turns out that those ladies are awesome!! I stayed up most of the night on Saturday finishing free motion quilting this baby. Now that is accomplishment! :) It was great having some late night sewing companions too. 

Lastly, I practiced my free motion writing for the label. It took a lot of practice writing "Gia" to get one that was worthy of the quilt, but I love it! Gia was about four months old when she received the quilt -- which is largely due to the fact that we live in separate states.... I love this quilt a lot, and I hope that Gia and her mommy know that they're amazing and that Lizzie is more like family to me than a lot of family I have. :) You guys rock! :) 

That's the story of Gia's quilt... now go check out the other awesome quilts at the Blogger's Quilt Festival