Finished Baby Quilt

The Berenstain Bears baby quilt is finally finished! The finishing of this quilt was upstaged by the other UFO finish last week, but now it's finally done.
The pattern is called "Arrows Up" and is by Jackie Seyer at FRJ designs. I pieced the quilt in 2014 and when it had marinated in the UFO closet long enough, I started the quilting!
Even though I am trying to be okay with "random layout", the places where there are clumps of colour bug me when I look at it. I remind myself again that "random" does not mean "evenly placed"! And I also tell myself that the baby won't care about exact colour placement.

Does this darkened photo show the quilting lines better?
I did stop machine quilting before the quilt became as stiff as cardboard (as advised by my blog readers!) 
It's now ready for another baby to be born! 
And I'm ready to finish up another quilt!

Baby Quilt

A friend of mine is having twins soon and so of course baby quilts will be needed! I looked through the UFO closet and pulled out this older Berenstain Bears quilt top. The pattern is called "Arrows Up" and is by Jackie Seyer. This project hasn't been seen on the blog for almost 3 years. It fell into the UFO closet because at the time I thought it was very busy and frenetic looking, and I was going to add some borders to try to calm it down a bit.

But now I have decided it's the perfect size and wildness for a new baby quilt. I pieced a backing from that yellow fabric and some odd leftover pieces. Isn't that a great selvage edge on that fabric? 
I have the Aurifil thread all ready to go... white on top and variegated yellow in the bobbin. It's pin basted and ready for "quilt as desired"!

Finished Quilt Top

Top secret Santa projects are being worked on in the studio, so I can't show you pictures of what this little quilty elf is up to. Sewing, sewing, and more sewing, with only one more week until Christmas!
I am also doing some finishing up of projects here and there.
Can you guess which quilt these blocks are for?
They are the corner blocks for the borders of the little letter quilt by Temecula. 



The pattern is still on their website if you want to make it now, or print out the patterns to sew another time. It is a really fun child's quilt to sew. It's going on the pile to "to-be-quilted" in 2015. 
It's a big pile!
Did you notice I put up the design wall lights for decoration?!?!

Quilty Love

My neighbours recently had a baby girl. 
I was delighted that the baby was a girl because I just happened to have a (prize winning) baby girl quilt all ready for her! 



Both Mom and baby had a very difficult time with the delivery, and Mom is still recovering. So of course I offered my free babysitting services and have had the pleasure of many hours of cuddling this sweetness.
How could you resist?
She is the most beautiful, tiniest, perfect little human!


She is over 6 pounds now and swims in her newborn sleeper. The baby quilt seems enormous, but she will grow into it! 
I love how she sleeps with her arms up!
This photo shows the starry flannel backing and the striped binding on her quilt.
Deep sigh... I love babies (especially this one) and love making baby quilts!!

Design Wall Monday - Baby Quilt

On my design wall today is a baby quilt made from Robert Kaufman flannels from the Daisy Love collection. These are such lovely flannels, so plush and soft, and washed up amazingly well. They are a joy to work with.
However, these are sooooooo not my colours! I think the quilt looks ugly, and just want to be done with it as soon as possible!
My plan is to finish 3 baby quilts (the first one is here) for my neighbour to pick from when her baby arrives. I am betting on a boy, but the Grandma-to-be is sure it's a girl (because she already has 3 grandsons!) I am anxious to move on to quilt #3 which will be made from fabrics that I really like!
To see more design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday - Finished Quilt!

On my wall today is a finished baby quilt... woohoo!

I finished binding it late last night, so the colours are not right in the photo, but I am very happy with this finish and wanted to share it today. I will get better photos when the sun is up.

Now I am ready for the neighbour's baby to arrive ... and I am hoping it will be a girl. But just in case, I will now get started on a baby boy quilt! 
To see more design wall posts, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday- Baby Quilt

On my design wall today is a baby quilt in development. My neighbours are having a baby soon and have decided to wait to find out the gender when it arrives.  So this quilt will be for their daughter, or if they have a son, I will need to figure out something else!

I just cut up some fat quarters in 2.5" strips and sewed them around 4.5" squares. I ran out of the center squares and had to piece a few of the center blocks, but I am relieved that I had enough fabric to finish 30 blocks. 
To see more design walls, hop over to Patchwork Times.

A Baby Quilt Finish

I forgot how rewarding it is to make a quick baby quilt from a panel, because it's been a really long time since I made one. This panel was purchased by a friend who asked me to quilt it for her niece's baby. It was fun selecting some Aurifil threads to match various areas of the panel. I like quilting with different colours, so I don't mind changing the thread many times.  How many times do you change threads when you're quilting?!? 
Then I had a blast machine quilting different designs...
one star to wish on, 
and lots of hearts in the center and in the surrounding border, 
and the letter 'A' for 'Abbott' in a few of the bubbles printed on the panel.

I was complaining in last Sunday's post about hand appliqueing the baby's name on the bottom of the panel, but it turned out OK. I don't love it, but I can live with it!
I bought the loveliest mint green flannel for the backing from Ye Olde Fabric Shoppe in Stratford (where the panel was purchased). It washed up beautifully and soft, and was a dream to quilt! 
I forced encouraged my friend to learn how to stitch the binding down so she could be part of making the quilt. We had a lovely visit while we stitched at the park. I was secretly hoping she would enjoy the sewing and want to become a quilter, but that didn't happen...at all!



Here's the finished quilt...

all ready to take to the baby shower. So cute!

Rainbow Scrap Challenge

It's the last week for the white scrap challenge and I am very happy with my stashbusting efforts this month! First I started a new project - a 36 patch quilt along and used up a lot of white scraps in my first 8 blocks. Then I focused on finishing up the 2 baby quilts I started this month.

Being the colour co-ordinated quilter that I am,  I had to put on some pink nail polish to stitch down the pink bindings!

Two finished baby quilts hanging on the clothesline!

The quilt on the left is machine quilted with loops, and the quilt on the right is stitched in the ditch.

Here is a photo of the backs of the quilts.I ran a row of leftover blocks across the middle of the backings... it looks like a zipper don't you think!?!?
Thanks again to Ruthie for the inspiration for these quilts!

I have a few scraps left from these baby quilts that I am cutting up to sew into more of these 36 patch blocks. 

Colour Co-ordination

My paying job has been exhausting the last couple of weeks as I am attending court for a local domestic violence turned attempted homicide case. (My local blog readers will know which one since it has been on the front page of the local paper most days.) It's not just the sitting there listening to the gory details of the violence and seeing the photos, since I'm used to that, but it's very draining to be so emotionally invested in a guilty verdict that may or may not be coming next week. And being in court during the day means doing my work in the evenings.
It's also exhausting because I can't quilt in the courtroom and am seriously deprived! As with all addicts, when I don't get my "fix", I get shakey and agitated and I NEED to quilt!
I was able to get the quilting finished and the binding sewn down on the baby quilt I worked on during the Masters golf tournament last Sunday. I didn't even realize until Thelma mentioned it in her comments on my blog that I unconsciously chose to be colour co-ordinated and worked on a project having the same colours as the Masters logo - green and yellow!

Last night I travelled to Barrie to do a trunk show at the Kempenfelt Quilters' Guild in Barrie, and we all know that the next best thing to actually quilting, is hanging around quilters! When I arrived I didn't know a single person there and by the time I left, I had met many interesting and wonderful people who are as addicted to quilting as I am!  Here is a photo of myself and 2 of their guild members, Muriel on the left and Vi on the right. And look at me being colour co-ordinated again...wearing matching outfits with 2 of the winners of the quiltaholic contest! What a great evening I had!

Another little finish

During one of my stash diving ventures in January I found a bag of pink 9 patch blocks I had received in a block swap back in the 90's and I felt they had aged enough and were ready to become a quilt :)
I cut the blocks into 4 pieces (disappearing 9 patch trick again - if you haven't made one yet, check out the tutorial here) and sewed them back together, then put them on pointe.
It looked kind of odd (and maybe still does) so I added some vertical strings of pink RicRac.

I haven't used RicRac on anything except mini quilts and now I am wondering how it will wash. Does anyone have any advice about this? I just quilted a line right down the middle, but for a baby quilt that will be washed frequently, should I also add some free motion on the RicRac edges? Now that it is finished I am wondering if I should have pre-washed the RicRac?  Do you prewash your RicRac or have any other suggestions?

Another finish

I finished another UFO this week...yahoo!  You can read about the beginning of the quilt here. I would like to make special mention of the date that I started it...January, yes, of 2009!!!  This quilt didn't even make it out of the car at quilt retreat in February and it was so close to being done. I finally got it out and finished up the quilting. 

What kind of quilting did I do?

-even, nestled feathers in the 3 pieced rows

-outline stitching around all the Winnies and piglet

s

-crosshatching lines on all blue background fabric

-wavy lines following the words in the green border (which I don't like and wish I hadn't done there, but...oh well...

done is better than perfect!)

-varied feather quilting with a wavy spine in the outside borders

And here it a shot of the back of the quilt which maybe shows the

 quilting lines better. I was happy that I had enough of the soft green fabric to make up the binding. I don't have a baby in mind to give this quilt to. I sure am delighted to have finished another UFO.

Wait until you see the next UFO in the production line!