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?

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!

Totes Magotes...

It's been all about the totes around here lately.

We had a really fun workshop led by Jessica at the SMQG at the beginning of January on how to make and modify your own tote bag pattern.  I've made a few bags but have never tried this style of tote, so I was all in and wanted to make something fun and bright (shocking, I know!).  I pulled out some of my stashed Echino birds and cherries print along with a few bright complimentary fabrics.

We had to come to the meeting with two quilted panels for the front and back along with the handle materials.  Since I started pulling fabrics at - cough - 11 the night before - cough - I didn't quite get all my prep done, but no one seemed to mind.

I changed up the basic pattern just slightly by adding extra ShapeFlex interfacing to the quilted panels and the handle strip because I like my bags sturdy!

It finished up SO great and even though it was a little taller than my typical bags, this turned out perfect for toting a yoga mat around for my daughter's after school dance class.

And since I was on a roll and the instructions were fresh in my mind, I made the girls their own totes in some very stylish but cute Cotton + Steel prints.  You just can't go wrong with kitties and butterflies for girls, right?

I made the same modifications with the Shapeflex but made the totes 2" shorter so that they were more square shaped than rectangular.  The boxed bottoms make them perfect for toting a few books/notebooks/packs of colored pencils around and the girls are in love :)

And just in case you were wondering about the post title, here you go. Enjoy the laugh from me.

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Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday!

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.

A Fashionable Princess...

Novelty fabrics - I am not usually a fan.  Well, maybe I should clarify that I'm not usually a fan of "licensed character" novelty fabrics.  But at the beginning of the summer, I can across a bolt of this fabric called "Fashionable Princess" in the Disney novelty shelf of my local Joann Fabrics.  

It looks darker in this stock photo, but in real life the background of this is a very pale pink.  Disney Princess but with a little more sophisticated look?  And I had a store coupon?  I bought the rest of the bolt.  And there it sat, making me feel guilty all summer long.  My only saving grace was that the kids had no idea that I bought it, so I wasn't getting asked "Did you make my dress yet?" on a daily basis.

But when I stumbled across the Poppy's Peekaboo Dress pattern by Create Kids Couture, I knew that I needed to get off my butt and start sewing.  I grabbed a simple black polka dot as the accent fabric and got going.

I did want to fussy cut one of the princesses for the front bodice and Belle was the one to make the cut for this version.  Unfortunately, that meant that the entire pattern piece was cut on the bias, so I Best Press-ed it to death and that kept it from stretching out.

The pattern has a few really nice detail touches that make it stand out from the crowd but it was really, really simple to follow.  The back view is just beautiful!

I still have plenty left in my stash and my oldest has already specified that she wants her version to be more about Snow White.  While I'm not planning on making another Poppy, I've got a pretty clear plan in mind.  It's in the queue, kiddo.  

Linking up:

Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday!

Pixie Stix and Strawberries...

With summer approaching (hypothetically) and a dress-up holiday behind us, I have seen post after post of adorable kids clothing in the past few weeks.  The last time I attempted garment sewing was the two Frozen costumes I made at the beginning of this year, and regular clothing was quite a while before that.  With some perfect fabric burning a hole in my stash, I'm throwing my hat in the ring using a go-to favorite pattern and a brand new one (new to me, anyhow!).

This fabric with all the falling rainbow Pixie Stix just screams "make me into a cute dress" - I love fabrics that have great details you can place along a bottom hemline! I bought two yards of this and was shockingly able to make it stretch into two dresses.  

For my oldest daughter, I used my favorite Carla C Simply Sweet dress pattern in a size 6.  I used some scraps of eyelet to make the ruffled straps, and more stash finds for the pink sash and the petticoat with the orange and pink bottom ruffle.

Even though the dress for little sis was going to be the same focus fabric, I still wanted her dress to be unique, so I bought the Tye Die Diva's Daydreamer dress pattern and made it in a 3T size with difference colors for the sash and bottom ruffle.  

Similar but different enough to stand out!  

I've also had the strawberry prints from Heather Ross's Briar Rose line for ages and had bought them specifically for kids clothing.  I made another Daydreamer dress in a 6/7 size with a few alterations.  I added a lining to the skirt and the bodice and omitted the bottom ruffle to let the strawberries shine. 

All of these dresses tie in the back and the bodices are generously sized, so I might even get two summers of wear out of each!  I forgot how satisfying it is to begin and end a project in a single day.  Maybe all the practice I'm getting out of these children's clothing pieces means that I should get back onto finishing something for myself?

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Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday!

Little One Almost Done...

My main goal for the BMQG/SMQG retreat was to finish a baby quilt top and have it ready to baste and quilt.  One full day of sewing, trimming, and pressing later, and I was ready to check that off my list!

It seems that up here in New England we are either having rain, snow or heavy wind which made this finished top a little difficult to photograph.  Hopefully once this is a true finish, the weather will be more cooperative.

Most of my photos were variations of this...

I'm planning on doing very simple quilting along the diagonal lines of the herringbones as suggested in the Quilty pattern that I took this from, but I'd also like to add a few hand quilting details in some of the fussy cut blocks of the rabbit families - maybe a heart or two?

The Littlest line of fabric by Art Gallery is so sweet and the colors are simply delicate - it's a perfect gender neutral collection for baby quilts or garments!

\My other big goal for the retreat was to get a really good head start on the time-consuming tilted stars - I was able to get about half of the alphabet done!  More on those blocks coming soon...

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