A Preppy Baby...

After finishing the Hazel quilt, I still had one more baby quilt to make before a double baby shower in April.  I pulled similar rainbow-themed fabrics to make a Preppy the Whale quilt and at the last guild meeting before the retreat weekend, I cut out all the pieces so that once I got to retreat, I could jump right into sewing.

At the end of the first day of the retreat, I had the entire top completed!  I adjusted the Oh Fransson pattern to make a similar size to the Hazel quilt.  To do this, I paired it down to 2 columns and only 6 rows and bumped up the width of the horizontal and vertical sashing.  Just those 12 blocks took a decent amount of uninterrupted sewing time, so I'm impressed by the makers who have done the larger sized tops requiring 30+ whales!

I like the softer rainbow colors - just enough yellows, pink, and purple to balance out all the cooler tones and still just right for a baby boy.

I pretty much repeated the loopy meander that I used when quilting the Hazel top and backed it in the same blue flannel.  The good news is that the quilting went even faster this time around and I would have finished it completely in just a few hours if I hadn't run out of white thread with only a handful of space left to quilt.  So I must be making progress!  Still have to work on keeping my stitches consistent, but it's become a much less scary process for me.

So both of these quilts are ready to be gifted and I hope that they bring some comfort and brightness to some sweet spring baby boys :)  Don't they look adorable together?

A Thoroughly Modern Mini...

Remember how I just mentioned that I'm really not drawn to solids?  Perhaps that's the main reason why I've been dragging my feet on the most recent guild challenge that is due in May.  The Seacoast Modern Quilt Guild will be having an exhibit at The Gathering in November 2015 and (obviously) we will be trying to bring a taste of the modern quilting world to a show that is mostly traditional in theme.

To encourage everyone in the guild to participate, the guild asked us all to pick a traditional quilt block and re-imagine it into a modern mini.  No rules except to emphasize the modern interpretation.  Oh, and to ONLY USE SOLIDS.

*insert huffy, bratty breath here*

I selected the Bachelor's Puzzle block - and then I promptly left it in my tote bag and refused to look at it for two months.  But once I started seeing a couple members creating really beautiful minis, the guilt got the best of me and I plucked it from my bag with resolve.  After looking at my source material for more than 5 minutes at a time, I formed a plan of attack.  One of the reasons I picked this block from the list was that I thought all those geometric shapes would be fun to throw out of whack.  The block is called a puzzle after all.  So why not take those puzzle pieces apart and play around?

I literally redrew the block onto my larger graph paper with my trusty colored pencils, cut out all the shapes and started messing around.  It didn't take long to see that those two toned arrows were just itching to fly off that center square and break free.

It's truly a Bachelor's Puzzle that's been deconstructed!

I used a double layer of batting along with matchstick quilting to make my "original" block pieces pop off the mini.  And I quilted a few phantom diamonds to evoke the more traditional block image.  I think the effect looks pretty good - and thoroughly modern!  This mini finishes at 18" square.  The background is Kona Honeydew but I didn't label my blue or purple shades, so I'm clueless on those.  Sorry!

And while I'm still not sold on going completely solid, I can see why many modern quilters like the graphic and pop qualities that it lends to a quilt.

Linking up:

Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday!

One Hip Hazel...

It's no big secret to say that I'm one of the many Elizabeth Hartman (aka Oh Fransson) fans out there.  Her latest patterns Hazel the Hedgehog, Fancy Fox, and Preppy the Whale all made their way into my shopping cart fairly quickly and I've been waiting to bust them out for just the right project.

And what better reason for cute quilts is there than a new baby?  Two of my Workplace Proximity Associates* are due with baby boys this spring and I thought that these patterns were just the right mix of fresh, modern, and cute to get the job done!  I ended up going with Hazel the Hedgehog first and pulled an array of light and bright fabrics straight from my stash to get a full rainbow (shocking, I know) of hedgies.  Trying to reign in my scrap bags, I used a variety of tone-on-tone white scraps for my block backgrounds.  Now looking at the finished photos, I'm not so sure that I should have done that since some read more cream than white, but oh well.

The baby sized pattern calls for 9 Hazels, so I kept one in the grey tones and let her have the killer magenta Echino specs.  Hip and cute?  Definitely a winner!

Hazel blocks definitely take a decent amount of time to piece together, but it really helps to get all your pieces cut out (and labelled!) at once so you can be a chain piecing machine.

But my biggest accomplishment on this quilt is definitely the quilting.  I am still trying to conquer the fear of FMQing and this quilt was the first that I've felt comfortable doing from start to finish.  I have a hard time with the "basic" meander pattern, but this curly loopy meander felt much more fluid for me.

I actually remembered to breathe, kept my gloves on the whole time (despite the fact that my husband refers to them as my "serial killer gloves"), and was rewarded with no snags, crazy bits or folds on the front OR BACK!!  I was so excited - it totally felt like victory.  Plus you just can't beat that crinkly texture...

The quilt is backed in a super snuggly blue plaid flannel and I brought the backing around to the front and machine bound it.  I wouldn't do this again with a flannel - it stretched out in a few places and looked a little messier than I prefer to finish things.  But hey, baby quilts are meant to get messy, so I just gave this one a little head start.

The second baby quilt will be Preppy the Whale and I'm aiming for a similar color theme on the front and the same blue flannel on the backing.  Since the BMQG weekend retreat is just around the corners, I've got all my pieces cut and ready to go!

*Side note: Can I just say how upset I am that I no longer have Parks & Recreation to look forward to each week?  One of my most favorite shows EVER....so excuse me while I go relive the glory days via Netflix and Hulu.  End of speech.

Linking up:

Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday!

An Earthy Rainbow...

I mentioned earlier that I had signed up for another mini swap on Instagram - this one was rainbow-themed, so I just couldn't resist.  But true to form, my partner's favorite colors and preferred palettes were quite different from my own.  Where I tend towards bright and bold, she favors earth tones - brown, green, orange.

Hm.

The interesting part about a swap is trying to balance the theme of the swap with your partner's favorite fabrics, colors, and quilting/sewing styles.  She didn't have any favorite fabric lines or designers listed but she remarked that she preferred minimalist designs and applique.

For applique with a modern and minimal feel, I thought the logical choice was something from Alison Glass Applique.  After going through the book cover to cover, I was drawn most to her Medallion pattern.  In the book this is made into a cushion cover but it really lends itself to a mini perfectly.

With a design in mind, I turned to colors.  You would think that a rainbow swap wouldn't require a lot of thought in the color department, but with her preference for more natural tones, I wanted a palatte that was rainbow with earthy roots.

Perfect!

Aside from the brown background, the fabric pull for this came strictly from my scrap bins.  Perhaps I overpulled just a bit...but it's good to have choices, right?

Once I narrowed down the choices, it was on to tracing out shapes on Wonder Under and playing around until I got the design just right.

For quilting, I did a small blanket stitch around the appliqued shapes with diagonal straight lines through the background.  The contrast in texture around the applique really made me happy!

So here it is in all it's glory during one of the past month's snowstorms. Even though it's a little out of my ordinary choices, I really like it and would be more than happy if it stayed here with me.  But it's about to ship off to it's new home and I hope that my partner loves it as much as I do!

Linking up:

Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday!

Apparently It Was a Small Year...

Here I was all geared up to do the typical "year in review" post and then I went to pool all my photos and said, "Huh.  Didn't realize that had happened..."  So to honor the cutest little viral video from last year (besides BatDad):

Apparently, I went small this year.  Turns out that 2014 was the year of the mini quilt.

I made them for challenges, for class samples, for swaps and for friends!  Not to mention Sophie's mini, of course :)

And apparently, my regular sized quilts took a teeny nosedive in favor of smaller projects because I only finished three.

Broken Oreos, Sari Feathers, Little One

Well okay, four - but I still haven't finished all the hand quilting on it yet.

But garments got churned out big time - probably because those small finishes feel so satisfying!

Fashionable Princess Poppy, Pixie Stix & Strawberry Dresses, & my Summer Dresses

And no surprise to anyone in this house, the Frozen Anna and Elsa dresses that I made for the girls last January were the most popular posts of the entire year.  By FAR.

And apparently all of those small projects added up to a whole heck of a lot!

Pencil Cases & Tote, Farmer's Market & Selfish Totes, Sewing Room Swap, Clutches Galore, Noodlehead Divided Basket

So what is going on for 2015?  Well besides the handquilting on my Rainbow Stars, I have two other things that I'm still smack dab in the middle of (I'm not even going to think about a couple of ancient WIPs that I can't commit to abandoning yet).

I am absolutely DROOLING over the new SkillBuilder BOM, Technicolor Galaxy, but still haven't made up my mind about it.  Maybe I need to finish some things before I give myself permission.  Plus I signed up for another mini swap on Instagram - and it sounds like it's right up my alley.

Can't wait to get going on it and see what comes my way in return :)

The Last and the First...

While the title of this post sounds like some profound novel in progress, I have my last finish of 2014 to share with you.  But what I'm most proud of is that it's also my daughter Sophie's first quilt finish - ever.  She is 6 and has been watching me sew for her entire life.  She's pretty crafty herself but the furthest we've gotten as far as sewing is her sitting at my sewing machine, practicing sewing straight lines onto paper.  But last week,  I got on a potholder kick due to a gorgeous post by Ashley at Film in the Fridge.  More on this next week, I promise! 

Inspired by the idea of scrappy rainbows, I had ALL of my color coded bags of scraps out and scattered across the floor in my tiny sewing corner.  Sophie sees all the fabric and asks if she can sew too - usually this just amounts to her taking her ragged safety scissors and ravaging the life out of fabric scraps.  Sure, I say...and if I'm being completely honest, I was only half listening and trying to stay in the zone.  Maybe a minute later, she asks if I can sew these two pieces of white fabric together.  Yeah, yeah, here you go....I mumble.  I zip it through my machine and back into the zone I go.

Five minutes go by and suddenly - in typical mom fashion - I realize that things are quiet.  Too quiet.  I turn around and see this:

I feel instantly proud - here she is armed with only scraps and a glue stick, making this adorable rainbow "quilt".  But also, in that flash of proudness, I felt that awful flash of mom guilt.  I was wrapped up in my own project, single-minded and focused...and this was happening literally a foot behind me.  And I was missing it.

Needless to say that the potholders were set aside and we finished the rainbow together.  It took all my self control not to trim here or smooth a rough and jagged edge there.  She was happy with how it looked and it was HER quilt.  Perfection be damned.  It looks perfect to her, so who am I to argue?

When all the gluing was done, we ran it under the iron to set things up a little firmer and I asked if she wanted me to quilt it all down.  If this was practice for her, it was going to be practice for me too!  I decided to practice a different technique in each color band - matchstick quilting in the pink center, pebbles in the purple, crosshatching in blue, meander (I stink, STINK at this supposedly easy style!) in green, ribbon candy in yellow, chain squares in orange, and a regular curvy back and forth in red.

Even though the backing is really dark and busy, I love how the rainbow quilting looks on the back :)

I did a very tight grid in the white background and a free motion sunburst in the block of sunshine.

Sophie says that she wants to use it as a doll blanket, but I added a couple pockets on the back just in case she decides to hang it on the wall instead.

My favorite part of this whole thing is that it was pinned up on my corkboard while I was deciding how to quilt it and Sophie wandered up behind me and put her little (okay, not so little anymore) arm around my waist.  "Mummy," she says.  "It's so beautiful that it makes me want to cry!"

Me too, honey.  Me too.

This Quilt is So Baller...

The major breakthrough of my summer sewing slump was all because of my friend Sarah.  You know Sarah from Smiles Too Loudly, don't you?  If you don't already, go ahead and check her out because she's awesome.

Anyway, a few months ago Sarah and I both signed up for the Schnitzel and Boo Mini Quilt Swap on Instagram.  We were pretty excited about it but also a little nervous at how large it was and (let's be honest) if we would actually like what we got.  So we made a little side pact - just in case something went off the rails along the way, we'd be each other's "angel" and come up with something pretty cool to take the sting of disappointment away.

In the meantime, I made a mini Wavelength quilt that I was pretty darn proud of.  Sarah really liked it too - enough to show her husband Joe who proclaimed that "this quilt is so baller!"  Never had one of my quilts called anything like "baller" before and it gave me a good laugh.  I ended up really liking the mini that I received in return from Amira at Little Mushroom Cap.  When I checked back in with Sarah, she had made this gorgeous Aerial mini.  But was still waiting...

and waiting...and waiting.  She did eventually get her mini and was pretty happy with it!  But in the weeks of in between time when she was certain that she had somehow been forgotten and left off the list, I decided to take matters in my own hands. Angel-style.

So Sarah likes yellow.  A lot.  Yellow is not my favorite to work with, but I needed to make Sarah a yellow mini quilt because I knew it would be perfect for her. She's also a novelty print fan - especially cats.  On a trip up to my grandmother's during the summer, I found the perfect fabrics to start with.

And so after not sewing for weeks and weeks, I jumped right back into another Wavelength mini. I went for lemon/lime tones with some aqua and magenta thrown in to complete the spectrum.

Plus I had to include a few fussy cuts.  Obviously.

Instead of my previous choice of low volumes creams for the background, this time I went with varying shades of grey.  I wanted the star points getting lighter towards the edges while the grey would be getting darker.  This sort of ended up getting value-muddy in the middle, but I still like the effect.

I used the kitty fabric again in the binding and the effect of cats peeking out from the edge was just too perfect...

Of course, the best part of all of this was throwing out little teases of what I was working on via Instagram.  All the while, Sarah had NO idea that this was going to be for her...

My absolute favorite part was when I posted my fabric pull for the quilt and this was Sarah's comment:

I chortled with glee like your baddest Disney villain.

No wait...I lied.  My favorite part is the back.  Because I needed to acknowledge that with all the love she put into the quilty universe without knowing what she would get back in return, Sarah deserved a baller quilt too.

Linking up:

Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday!