A fun baby quilt

My sister recently asked me to make her good friend a baby quilt. Now that it's been gifted I can share it. Her nursery theme is Classic Disney.  My sister asked me for a Half Square Triangle (HST) quilt. Here is the inspiration photo my sister sent me. This is a poster that will be hanging in the nursery (I don't know anything more about it than what is in the picture).

So I pulled all the colors from the poster and here are the results!  I love these colors so much, I'm sure I'll be making more quilts with them.

I did straight line quilting on my domestic.

And managed to find the PERFECT backing fabric. These are all classic Disney posters.

For the binding I decided to go with Lime. I hear the mama considered a lime crib, so I think she'll appreciate the little extra lime. 

Quilt stats:

Size: 40" x 54"

Pattern: no pattern

Fabrics: Stash

Quilted: me

Finished: 4/18

Cuddle Monsters

A while back I bought this adorable pattern from my LQS intending to make one for my son. It's called Cuddle Monsters and is by WhistlePig Creek.

I made it for him for Christmas and never posted any photos of it. Mostly because he was unimpressed and won't wear it. He opened the box and said, "There's nothing in here"!! Ah - way to break a momma's heart. I get it though, he's 3, he wanted toys....

However.... My daughters eyes got wide with longing!  She requested a pink and green monster.

I actually already had these flannels on hand and had planned to make pajamas. But since I don't really like garmet sewing, this was the perfect excuse NOT to make them!

She loves her monster, I let her pick the scales, ears and eyes so it really is her monster. The flannel makes them nice and snuggly too.

My sister saw them and put in a request for a friend of hers. She requested her's be blue and red. (and my daughter generously modeled for me)

 

This one I only used flannel on the inside for the snuggle factor.

This one is now living with it's new owner who seemed a bit more excited than my son did when he received his.

If I can ever get a picture of him in his, I'll be sure to post it. I used minky for the inside of his and I think I'm still cleaning the fuzz off my sewing room floor!

Guess who I met this weekend?

That's me with Angela Walters, Modern Quilter Extraordinaire! And yes, our shirts are matching. Didn't you get the memo that Coral is the new black?? haha!


Philly MQG held a workshop and lecture by Angela. she was a great speaker and I'm thrilled I got to go to both.  You all know I'm a huge Tula Pink fan, so of course by extension I'm a huge Angela Walters fan!

Her workshop was great. It was a lot of demonstrations of the different quilt patterns that are her favorites.

She showed us some straight line shapes. I'm slightly obsessed with that bottom yellow square!

Then we moved on to swirls and curves.

This was an example of how different levels of contrast in quilting can create depth and show off or hide elements of your quilt.

And this one she showed us how to create textures by varying the size of your shapes.

Besides being a talented quilter, Angela is funny and a great speaker. One of things she said that totally resonated with me is, "if it takes too long, that's a valid reason not to do it".  I totally agree, quilting is supposed to be fun!

The quilting part is usually what I found tedious and skipped over. but seeing just what beautiful effects can be created with the quilting, I'm inspired to do more with mine in the future.

Not that I have any illusions of making masterpieces like this!! But her lecture was all about how she became a quilter and the message I took away is that, "if it can be done, it can be learned".

Thank you Angela for getting my creative juices flowing! And thank you Philly MQG for hosting such a great event!

Puzzle quilt finished

I was just able to finish up another baby quilt. I forget where I got this pattern, but it is called Snuggle Blocks and is by The Pattern Basket. I made mine with Poetica by Art Gallery Fabrics. I love this line and wish I had more!

Those squares on the outside? Taggies!! Such a cute idea right!?

I tried to get a photo of the back, but it was too windy and I wound up with a peekaboo of my daughters log cabin. But you get the idea.

Here's a close up of some of the gorgeous colors in this line.

I did the quilting myself and kept it simple, but dense enough to withstand a baby or small child. And the thing I'm most excited about with this quilt is that it has gone to a local boutique consignment shop with a couple other baby quilts I've made to be sold. I'm hoping it sells so I can raise some cash for more fabric!! ;)

I also made a few burp cloth sets to see if there is any demand for them. Here is my boy set:

Girl set:

 

and a gender neutral set

 

I'm hoping for the best!

Quilt stats:

Size: 49" by 58"

Pattern: Snuggle Blocks

Fabrics:  Art Gallery Poetica

Quilted by: Myself

Finished: 1/30/13

Getting to long arm

My quilty friend Denise (My Life In Quilt) had generously invited me to use her longarm probably about a year ago but I had not gotten around to doing it until last weekend. I finally set up my babysitter (aka Mr. FO) and headed over to her place for a fun day learning to long arm.

With all the yummie food and the chatting I'm surprised we managed get any work done! But we did load up my muslin to work on and I have to say really liked it! This surprised me because I really don't like the quilting step on my home machine. It's probably my least favorite part of the process.

Here is what I did with my first attempt.

I started out with some free motion to get the feel of the machine.

I attempted some pebbles and feathers which were laughable but fun. Those are Denise's pebbles that look like actual circles.

Attempted a word.

And then she got out a pantograph for me to try.

And finally the boards (which I don't know the official name of) but they are plastic and you follow the pattern on them.

I have to say, I really loved it and now I'm scheming on how to get my hands on my own! It definitely would not be my least favorite part of the process if I had one of these guys. Big thank you to Denise for such a fun day!

What about you, what is your least favorite part of the process?

Free Motion Quilt Challenge February

Well, we must be getting closer to baby time because I'm starting to swell like a tick! Doctor says all is normal though so I'm plugging along.

The Free Motion Quilt Challenge has been perfect for me at this point. Small sized projects that don't take a huge amount of time. So I decided to attempt February's Challenge at Sew Cal Gal yesterday.

First off, the changes I made in my machine. I put my tension all the way down instead of up.

And I had heard from several sources (Pink Chalk Fabrics, Bunny Hill Designs, Sue Nickels - thanks Pat for loaning me the DVD!) that Microtex needles were the best to use for quilting. So I hopped over to Joann's and picked up a pack to try.

It seems to have made a difference. I started with some stippling to see what my stitches looked like.

The verdict was good! The stitches are much nicer. I think the microtex might be my go to needle for everything. Once I use up all the quilting needles I've stocked up on during sales - whoops!

So then I decided to try the feather challenge for February. Here's my first attempt.

Kinda wobbly, and some of my petals look more like whale heads than flower petals! I also have to work on my stopping and starting. I had some jumps where I thought the machine was stopped by it hadn't quite stopped yet. But overall, I'm okay with this as a first try. I will definitely give it another shot.

The feather tutorial from Diane Gaudynski was very good. I don't know how often I'll use this motif in my quilting, but I appreciate having the knowledge to make them. Definitely need to practice more. Go check out the tutorial and try it yourself!

Charity Sewing for PMQG

Over the summer, the Philly Modern Quilt Guild kicked off the Jay McCarroll Habitat Challege with a block design contest. We each received fabric and got to design a block to be considered. This was the block I designed.

All of these blocks are going to be used for charity quilts to be sent to Japan for earthquake relief. PMQG held a sewing day to get all the quilt tops put together and members were asked to take them home for quilting. I took one and decided to try a few new things since the quilt is so small. This is the first quilt I've quilted with stippling!

The blocks are pretty awesome aren't they? That's a big part of why I did stippling. With all those different designs, I couldn't decide how to quilt this one. Here's a close up of my quilting. I chose a light gray thread that matched with the sashing.

I think the back of the quilt is just as cool...

And the other new technique I tried was machine binding the edges. I used a "fancy" stitch from my machine that kind of looks like "X's". I figure this will hold up better to lots of use (since we don't know where these will end up) than hand stitching would. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Now to get it washed up and returned to the Guild for donation!

I'm linking up to Try New Things Thursday. Have you tried something new lately?