It's Friday...everybody say whoop whoop!

It is Friday - yay! I'm having a really full day today: early a.m. teleconferences, art docent volunteer at Wild Things classroom, more work work, catch up my blogs a little, 3 errands to run, lunch with a dear friend I haven't seen in ages, a mammogram (note to self: remember the advil!), Little league baseball practice, Boy Scout Pinewood Derby. I expect to be exhausted and ready for sleep after all this, but I like these kind of days where I am forced to juggle a bit to get everything accomplished.  Often I don't get it all done, but that's usually okay too.

Okay, my Friday Whoop Whoop linky project is this quilt for a brand new baby girl who I haven't gotten to meet yet!  I showed a little preview of this when I was still piecing it together - now it's quilted and bound, washed for the crinkles, and ready to go (though I may redo the label as you will see...)

The prints are from the Sherbet Pips line - most "modern" quilters will recognize this popular print - I've had these charm packs in my stash for a long time just waiting for the right project.  A couple of close shots:

I really love these little prints!  I used Kona Snow for the sashings, Kona Med. Gray for the binding, and a blue polka dot flannel backing. The quilting is simple diagonal lines shadowing the inside and outside of the patches.  I haven't done much straight line quilting (or any quilting as I'm still new to that part), but if you don't examine it too closely I think it looks pretty cool with the lines as opposed to an all over stipple.

My one disappointment is that the label bled a little in the wash.  I may decide to redo it - I used a black sharpie, but forgot to heat set it (I assume that will work, but if anyone knows it won't please let me know!). I may run down to Beverly's and look for a pen made specifically for fabric though.  This is my first actual label. I have (sometimes) stitched my initials and the year onto quilts, but I usually forget to do that even!

Nice to have a finish this week!

The other thing I did in the past couple of weeks was join the Craftsy BOM class (it's Free!) - each month there are two blocks to practice a new piecing method.

January was "slash" blocks: 

block #1

block #2

February was HSTs made two ways and then putting them together for different looks.  Piecing the small HSTs (3 inch finished) was more challenging than I expected, especially for the 2nd block which I think I will do over to get it right - the seams are not all lined up and I used scrap HSTs to replace the ones I botched first try - so the red HSTs are not with Kona Snow, but a cream color.  The first block came out a bit smaller than it was supposed to because my 1/4 in seams weren't "scant" enough, but I think it may still work.  If not I will have to do that one over. 

block #1

block #2

I am not using a FQ bundle of coordinated prints - I have to work on using up some more stash fabrics, and I think it doesn't matter so much for the more scrappy look of a sampler. I pulled a rainbow of fabrics and scraps to use. We'll see! I've never made a sampler quilt or BOM quilt, so I'm curious to see how I like it in the end.

I hope you all have a great weekend!
For more craft goodness, check out Sara's Whoop Whoop Linky party! (bonus this week - there's a giveaway too!)

And I found some other fun linkies, like TGEFF party at Quilter in the Gap !

And Sew and Tell Friday at Amylouwho:

I need a little baby for a little fall stroller blanket

Just kidding - I need a little baby of my own like I need another hole in my head!  But I need to think of one that we know who might like a little stroller blanket now that the days are getting crisp.

The photo is an optical illusion - the blanket is only at 22" x 28" but I draped it over this miniature garden bench we have in the backyard (you know, for when we have miniature guests at our numerous barbeques!)  The story of this blanket is that I had all these different partial skeins of cotton-ease and other cotton-y yarns in my scrap stash of yarn. I thought I'd have enough to do a sort of random garter square patchwork - pretty much like what you see here.  I still have a little of a couple of colors left, but did use something that I would have eventually stuffed in a bag and either squirrelled it away where I wouldn't have to look at it or given it to our care provider, who has a magical way of incorporating random bits of crafty stuff into activities for the kids. No kidding - she's magical.

I have a couple of other knitting projects on the needles at the moment and some things queued up - but I'm trying to finish off UFOs and stash yarn only for awhile.

Actually - I'm also going on a fabric diet - my obesity issues with fabric are greater right now than yarn. So I'm quilting away when I have at least 15 minutes at a time on the Christmas quilt:

It would be great to finish in time to enter in the Blogger's Quilt Festival happening right now, but I don't know if I can finish quilting and bind it by next Friday.  If not, I'll find another quilt to enter - I love the BQF at Amy's blog!

Have a great weekend and a fun Halloween!

Baby, it's a coin quilt!

Time for another baby quilt!  Wild Thing has been sick this week and going to bed very early, so I had a couple of evenings with time to work on a project.  I've managed finally to give up a more complex plan for this quilt (more on that another time) and am using a very straightforward coin quilt design.  It's my first coin quilt, but I foresee more of these in my future.

I just sketched up the dimensions and used a Tweet Tweet by Keiki charm pack plus cream muslin. The back is a nice Valori Wells flannel. I'll show pictures of the final quilt once I figure out how I should quilt it and then put on a binding. I'm thinking something pink for the binding because 1) it's for a baby girl, and 2) the colors aren't too girly on purpose, but the flannel a green agapanthus print making it even less girly. Pink binding could draw out the pinks in the Tweet Tweet and contrast with the green. But I don't have anything suitable in my stash, so it's a little mission for the weekend (darn, I'll have to go to the quilt shop). This baby is coming within the next 2-4 weeks so there's no time to waste!

I used this tutorial from Quilt Taffy for a quilt as you go baby coin quilt with somewhat different dimensions. Overall I'm pretty happy with it so far - though I'm not sure my stacks are as straight as they could be.  I started out pinning like crazy (see below), but ended up with fewer and fewer each strip until I just just had a couple at the top and that was it. The tutorial advises more pins due to shifting of the layers.  I think this is probably true, but after the first 3 strips the layers were more stabilized.

Blogger's Quilt Festival entry - Angela's quilt

(see button to the side or the following link for info on the Bloggers Quilt Festival)

I'm entering a quilt into the Blogger's Quilt Festival that I made over a year ago. But I didn't blog yet, and it's a quilt that I still feel so happy about.  It was made for the daughter of some dear friends - the whole family was going through something of an ordeal, and especially focused on this beautiful baby girl Angela. So the whole time I was piecing and quilting and binding with handstitching to the back it was a meditation and a prayer for her. For the whole family.

I didn't use a pattern - it is just simple 4 patch blocks alternating with solid blocks. The Heather Ross prints are so happy, and I used my Janome embroidery function to try out a ring of hearts pattern on the solid blocks, and it all came out just as I had pictured in my head. I learned a lot about being more precise in my work, slowing down enough to really focus. As one of my first quilts, I was so pleased with how it came out!

The last blog post I made was about Megan's quilt,  also filled with happy Heather Ross prints and happy thoughts and prayer and tears... I really love the feeling that the final product carries in it with these "prayer quilts".

another one down!

Okay, another project to tick off my list! And in time for a baby shower that is coming up on Saturday for a couple who we are SOOOO happy for!  But I did have to be creative about picking something relatively simple that I could finish in the time constraint.  There are numerous imperfections...mostly due to using the minkee fabric for the backing. It stretches, and doesn't feed through well even with a walking foot...so the minimal quilting I did do resulted in some loose/puckered parts on the back and some uneven stitching.

BUT, the overall result is darn cute. And the minkee is very snuggly...so hopefully the overall result was worth the minkee.  In the future, I would reserve minkee to smaller baby quilt projects. And it will probably be easier the second time... so we will see.

cute Funky Monkey panel center...

dotty Minkee backing

final quilt - something like 40 x 50" give or take.

I used flannel for a batting to keep the weight lighter, and just sewed laters together and turned with a topstitch edge rather than binding. The borderlines are quilted, and concentric rectangles around the monkey headshot squares.

Yay!  Now, Megan's quilt next, and then another baby quilt, and then the Christmas quilt, and then also I need to figure out how to hang our Kaz Dream Quilts (one for Wild Thing and one for us - I had totally forgotten about those, but Mr. Wonderful reminded me about that tonight...), and then also the cute Japanese fabric for Teen Wonder - still haven't figured out the best pattern for those. Worst thing is that I went to Beverly's and browsed through fabric but couldn't figure out the best accent fabrics to use. It's sort of a chicken and egg thing with the quilt design since that would make a big difference in the choices.

Also have some knitting projects to attend to - still progressing on Teen Wonder's hoodie vest, but haven't been spending much time knitting (obviously).

Anyway, it feels good to finish a project no matter how large or small!