I pulled out a work in progress that is more than a year old and finished it up. I originally didn’t know who it was for, and then I realized it was too precious to give away and finished it up for my own little girl.
I can’t love the colors more.
There was a specific request to have a ”cozy” satin binding. Which I think was the perfect solution.
This is our cat Emily. Joining in on the photo shoot.
A month from tomorrow my husband’s sister is getting married and my guest room has a HUGE pile of crafty things growing and growing and growing for the event. More on that later.
I stepped away from that wedding to work on a quilt for an October wedding who requested purple and green. A sneak peak of the progress.
I am working without a pattern, just some rough math and graph paper and almost 200 purple diamonds. I am loving the diamonds these days. Starting with this baby quilt and then the pink and red pillows I feel like a pro at cutting diamonds.
2″ green sashing and I am loving the result! It has taken almost 2 weeks to get to this point, where I have sewn half the top. It might be a while before I can call this baby done.
We are at the end of a long summer of weddings. And this wedding brought us to the North Carolina beach for a week. Which is pretty great. Only on day 2 and feeling all the stress melt away. Ahhhh…
This bride is crazy organized and had a theme over a year ago. Rustic Beach or some thing like that. All I know is she plans to have lots of peacock themed stuff. So I took that and ran…
Did I ever mention that I eloped? I don’t want to sound like a hater, but dear lordy, weddings these days are so big and involved. This here wedding celebration is starting on Wednesday with brunch and winding up late Saturday night. And there is no avoiding any of it, my hubby it the best man! Oy-Vey!
It is enough to drive a girl to strawberry daiquiris on the beach. Not that I had 2 or maybe 3 earlier today. Give me a justice of the peace and a nice quiet beach anyday.
anyway- the backside-
All green with a nice little pieced stripe. That navy is the bed sheet, I might have had a photoshoot with a daiquiri and not noticed that until now. Don’t worry folks, there is an aunt and uncle and grandma around to be in charge should anyone need to have a diaper change.
Sorry, got distracted there for a second. Here is another photo of the pieced stripe on the back.
And a little tag, Ta-dah! Now back to the beach. Much more relaxing to be done this week!
It feels like it has been a million years since I have been able to say “I finished a quilt” . Maybe that is why I forgot to take a good picture of the whole quilt top finished? Ah, well- here is the picture before it was finished, and it didn’t change that much. The rest of the pictures are from the finished quilt. Look close and you can see Eiffel towers in those little blue squares… hence Paris of ” Pirates and Paris”.
This little quicky was so satisfying to work on, and the recipients loved it!
however, the velour backing from Ikea was a terrible idea. It stretched like crazy and I finally just did little tiny button shaped stitching to tie it off. It was bunchy and puckery and was a true mess. Cozy and soft. But a mess.
One perk to the backing was the pre-embroidered design, that I think is just so sweet. Live and Learn, stretchy velour = mess.
So, baby is almost 6 months old which made me feel okay about wandering out to my first quilt guild meeting (ever) last night. The official name? Philadelphia Modern Quilt Guild. I am not usually a “joiner” of things. Driving there I wondered why that was. Then it was show and tell time. I was instantly reminded of my stage fright. The tunnel vision, the rambling, the general discomfort of standing in front of more than 3 people and talking. (I eloped for just this reason.) I rambled on and on, asked questions without waiting for answers and literally flashed the front and back of 2 quilts before I ran to my seat. It. Was. Embarrassing. I even had a nightmare about it last night. I mean really, why was I so scared of talking to a bunch of really nice quilting ladies. But I did it. And the ladies all seem very nice and I fear that I will never find the time to do the little monthly projects but, having goals is nice, so there you go.
Since I can hardly get the laundry done these days I showed a quilt I made for hubby for Valentines day of *ahm* 2009. Which I have never shown blog land because, well… it is very far from being done. Pebbling is harder than I thought. And I am kind of stumped on the binding. And well, I don’t know- once I missed the deadline I lost steam.
The applique boats were drawn by my husband to the very specific shapes. One is his, one is is brother’s, one is his dad’s. They build boats, I make quilts about their boats.
Pebbling? Hard for anyone else? break lots of needles like me? I love the result, but it makes me want to tear my hair out. And don’t you think I should add some fluffy clouds to the top on the front? hummmm….
I am trying to make a baby quilt in a hurry for an old friend and her darling baby who we are seeing on vacation next week. It is fun revisiting some of these fabrics, I have had some of these scrap triangles for ten years, just waiting for the right project. It felt like I had pulled out millions of triangles, but when I laid out this pieced top I was disappointed in the smallness. In my mind’s eye this was going to be big enough for a toddler bed but it is currently too small to be a baby quilt. Even though the triangles were mostly half of a 5.5″ square the finished squares ended up being 4″ . I think I have to add at least 2 rows to the long side. And a ginormous border. Of red? of white? of a rainbow polka-dot?
I loved doing this pattern with Lauren’s quilt, but those triangles were bigger and maybe more forgiving? I am having a hard time making clean points with such small triangles. Such is the nature of slightly wonky scraps.
****update*** finished quilt here
And a picture of the darling baby. She learned how to roll from her back to her front this weekend. And then when she gets there- cries in frustration that she is stuck on her belly. It must be tough to be a baby 
There is no telling how long it will take me to get these squares made into a quilt. But I wanted to share how I spent my last days of pregnancy. These are made from all my skinny scraps. I confess I separate my scraps into stripes, squares and triangles. A bit of my OCD showing. 
I was inspired by the paintbox quilt by Oh, Fransson. She is a little more measured and specific in her sewing but I love the result. I am a little more haphazard, maybe another green square, make the yellow ones bigger. I have plenty of plans for it, but sewing is one thing you can’t do while cradling a baby. Small sacrifice…
For our baby!
I have spent a long time on this quilt, partly because my big belly makes sewing a little tougher, but partly because I wanted it to be awesome. I think it ended up pretty awesome. 
I used some scraps for the back, not really what I had imagined in the beginning, but I am pretty pleased with it. The minty green stripes are minkee, I think maybe I should have made the whole back minkee, but the pinwheel squares were too hard to resist.
dear god that is an original title. almost as good as “vanilla ice cream, in a bowl” .
Anyway- I finished the pinwheel quilt last night. This darn quilt has been in process for way too long. I think I made the pinwheel squares more than 8 months ago. But the flip side of this is I am finishing all the stuff that has been stacked on top of my fabric stash- preventing me from making new stuff.
I hung it upside down for this picture, the fat white border is actually at the top…
I tried a little applique on the back side, which I love;
I was inspired by a McCalls quilting magazine that had a template for the flower petals. It also had vines and leaves but who can be bothered with that? I hurried a little and didn’t do a yellow flower like I planned, I miss it a little. But not enough to put it on now. Only 2 more WIP’s to do …
I kinda love the bento box pattern. I don’t know if you can tell from my other quilts here here and here. Oh wait- here too.
I have never made one for myself, but I think that will be coming soon. I am having trouble giving this one away. But I did tell the bride it was coming, so I don’t have much choice. I was trying to keep it a secret, but the wedding is tomorrow so the chances she is checking my wee website today are pretty slim.
I am so relieved to have this quilt done! So many projects to get working on, family arriving soon and our annual huge July 4th party next weekend. July 5th I will be hiding out for a while to prepare for my “Artist of the Week” table at the Lansdowne Farmers Market, July 25th. I am planning to relax in August!
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