Full aqua hearts

 Hi everyone! How are you doing? I am getting a little better, but I still don't want to talk about it. I do appreciate the kind messages and comments, though, so thanks! I am really cheered by them, and by all the spring that is happening. We already had to cut the grass, after first getting all the sticks picked up. Danged trees! I do have some very happy news, though-- my sweet niece has had her baby! She had a cute little girl with a very old-fashioned name. I know she's very tiny, but I swear she looks just like her mama!

If you recall, my niece requested a baby quilt in 'aqua and gray and Harry Potter.' She got a lovely aqua heart full of love. Take a look:

It turned out almost exactly like it looked in my head. I feel like there is something 'off' about the heart, but I didn't have a pattern and I fussed with it enough. My niece loves it, and that's all that matters. As you can tell from all the wrinkles, I washed the quilt before I photographed it, because I was so excited that I forgot to take pictures first. Oh, well! I did iron it, but it didn't much help.

I couldn't bring myself to put gray on the back of a quilt for a baby, so instead I used these fun owls. If you know anything about Harry Potter, you'll know that owls are pretty important to the story, so I feel like they fit. And the quilt looks great on both sides, too.

But what about Harry Potter? Well, if you look very closely, you will find several things in the quilting, including:

A magic wand!

A Golden Snitch! (Which looks like baby Yoda, but oh well!)

And the part that made my poor niece cry. . .

"You are so loved."

There are several other things hidden in the quilting, but you get the idea. They aren't perfectly quilted, but they're meaningful to my niece and her husband, and that's what counts. All in all, it's a little unconventional, but the baby looks adorable on it, and she should be able to use it for quite a while, as it finished at just about 40 by 50. Can you get any better?

Hope you are having a good week! I'm getting better slowly, so I hope to see you again really soon. Take care!

Sharing at all the usual places. See sidebar for details!

Attention Baltimore quilters!

I was contacted by a lovely woman named Cindy who is the founder of Ryan's Case For Smiles, which makes and donates pillowcases for kids hospitalized for cancer. Sadly, the coordinator of the Baltimore chapter is retiring and they are looking for a new person to head this very active chapter. If you are interested, please contact dana (at) caseforsmiles (dot) org.

Thanks!

Beauty for a small person

 Good day everyone! How are you today? I'm hanging in there. It's getting to be that time of year when it's dark when I get up and getting dark when I get home. This is no fun, especially because, somehow, the darkness makes people forget how to drive. Get it together, people! We can still see you trying to go 100 miles an hour through the traffic, even if it's dark outside.

Ah, well. Today I have something much brighter and happier to show off-- a finished baby quilt! Here she is:

Look at all that happy brightness. I almost took this little quilt apart because I wanted a print for the alternate blocks, then I remembered that I had looked for a print and didn't have an acceptable one. Good thing I remembered before I started in with the seam ripper. 

I made this little quilt top back in May, mostly to get those very cute churn dash blocks into a quilt top, and then hung it and the backing in the closet to age a bit. You know how that goes, right? Quilt tops have to age before they ripen enough to be quilted up. A friend needs a baby quilt for a girl, so I pulled this out and quilted it up to give to her. A win all around, I think. And Lord knows we need some wins around here right now.

I quilted this in a simple cross hatch, but used the serpentine stitch to make a wavy cross hatch. It looks great! Sometimes the simplest things are the best. The wavy cross hatch is also in Jacquie Gering's Walk book, along with some other cross hatch ideas.

 

The backing here is a fun dot that looks pink overall but is really a bunch of different colors. I originally had pink for a binding, but the aqua with the dots looks much better and goes with the fun owls on the front and the dots on the back. Overall, I am so happy with the way this turned out, and happy to pass it on to my friend to give to a 7 month old baby girl. 

 

With that, it's off to the weekend! Even though we're in this cycle where it's kind of nice all week and rains all weekend, I'm still happy to have a couple of days to rest a little. Hope you all get some rest, too, and maybe find something nice and bright to lighten up the darkness. Happy weekend!

 

 

 Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, and the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique

Sandy aqua heart

 Hello all, and welcome to another fine fall weekend. As I write that, though, I'm watching the clouds gather, and I'm pretty sure that means we're going to have some fine fall rain. Pretty sure that will whip even more leaves off the trees, too. Can freezing winds and the dreaded s-word be far behind? I'd like a little more fall color first, please!

This week I worked really hard to get a quilt all finished, but I'm only done with the top. The top is adorable, though! Take a look:

This heart is kind of 'freehand,' in that I just made it by arranging pieces on the design wall, with no pattern. It's pretty easy to make a heart, though I might have messed up there in the middle, but I am going to find a way to be okay with it. It was kind of fun, and pretty distracting, making sure that there was no place where the same fabric touched. I didn't quite manage that, but again-- let's find a way to be okay with it!

It will not surprise you that the aqua to turquoise pieces were cut for a different quilt that I never made. For the rainbow scrap challenge this year, one of my goals was to make something small with the scraps and quilt it up, so this is my "use-it-up" for the aqua month. I am so, so happy to use those pieces, and I think I have just enough for a scrappy binding, too. The background looks white but is really a sandy batik with splashes of yellow and a pale pink. This is just about 44 by 50, a perfect size.

There's another reason that I'm so, so happy about this quilt-- my niece is having her first baby, and she asked for "aqua and gray and Harry Potter." Well, I have the aqua covered, that's for sure! And I also have a gray backing for this quilt, but I'm looking for a way to sneak a little Harry Potter in there. We'll see what fun stuff I can think up that goes with the quilt at least a little bit. I'll probably just have to quilt some Harry Potter symbols into it.

I feel like that's a win, even if it isn't completely finished yet! If it rains this weekend I'll be able to at least baste it, otherwise it will wait a little bit. The baby isn't coming until January, so for once I'm a little ahead of the game. 

Hope you all have a lovely weekend. I went out and took these pictures while I'm waiting for the windshield replacement guy to show up. Something from the road hit the windshield right at my eye level as I was on the way home this week, and it cracked all the way across. It was a little scary! Everybody be careful out there, because those big pieces of glass are really pricey!

Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique and soscrappy for RSC23.

Fast, fun, and bright

 Hi all! How was your week? I've had yet another doozy of a time. It's pretty obvious that we have some serious family stuff going on, but I keep trying to stitch a few things when I can. And this week one of the administrative people at school became a grandma for the first time, so how could I not stitch her up something really cute? Want to see? Here it is:

Isn't that adorable for a first time grandma? This is a variation of the Quick Strippie from Mary Quilts, a super fast and cute pattern that is suitable for any occasion. I just couldn't cut the fun alphabet print into smaller pieces. I wanted to keep as much of the alphabet together as I could and not cut the pieces too small. It's not the pattern, but I think it works.

I did not think to look at the selvage, and I'm too lazy to go downstairs and dig it out of the trash, but I've had this fun print for a while. Come to think of it, I've had all of my fabric for a while, including the lime green and the last bits of the purple that are also in the quilt.

This quilt is about 40 by 48, the perfect "play on the floor" size.  I used the last of the Hobbs Poly Down batting that I had and quilted it with the serpentine stitch. The Poly Down is really quite nice, very light and not at all like the old poly batting. I think it works pretty well for this type of quilt, too. Easy to wash when someone spits up on it.

The backing is also a fabric that I had for quite a while, from the Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric. I'm so happy to use this up, and it works as a nice backing here. And check out that striped binding! You know how you have a fabric for a while and you just get tired of seeing it in your stash? That's how I felt about these, and now I can forget about them because they are used up and happy in a quilt!

That's about all I've been able to accomplish lately. Things are weird, and my regular machine still isn't back from the repair person. I miss it, even though the backup machine is doing great. Should be finished this next week. I think they had to get a repair part from the moon or something. I hope the shipping isn't too much.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! Tomorrow is my birthday and Mother Nature is giving me a tropical rainstorm. Won't that be fun? I hope it comes with pie. Brownies would be nice, too.

Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique.

Jazzing up January

 Hi everyone! How are things going for you? We are experiencing the grays of January. You know what I mean-- sometimes it rains, sometimes it's just cloudy, sometimes it snows, but mostly it's just gray. We did have actual rain and a few spits of snow this week, but nothing stuck to the ground. That's totally okay with me! Sometimes I miss it, but I do not miss shoveling.

What with all the January-ness around, and having spent a bunch of time with a non-favorite color, I decided to pull out something bright and happy this week. I ended up quilting up this fun toddler-size quilt:

Doesn't that just raise your spirits? This is a quilt I made to test Preeti's pattern Arabella's Garden, which you can find right HERE. I had fun making it and even more fun quilting it up. It certainly made me feel happier, and I think it adds to the landscaping outside.

As fun as the front of the quilt is, take a look at the back:

I love this so much. This is a piece of an Eric Carle fabric that I got a long time ago, but I didn't realize the animals would be so big so I didn't use it as planned. It works great as a happy backing for this quilt! I might like it better than the front. It's a close call.

I did a couple of experimental things when quilting this quilt. The first is that I used one of those plastic extension tables that you can buy to fit around your machine bed so that you have a larger sewing surface area. It was a disaster. It was made by my machine's manufacturer and came with the machine, but it just didn't work. It kept moving, and the quilt kept getting snagged on the edge or the end of it. If you look at the picture above, you can see the results of the snagging. I only used the table for half of one stitching line, and I left it in because I didn't feel like ripping and I doubt anyone will notice it.

The other experiemnt was using a poly batting instead of cotton. It worked pretty well! I used Hobbs Poly Down. It has a "hand" like 100% wool and quilted just beautifully, and it makes a really nice texture. Nothing like old poly batting! The only thing I would do next time is zigzag the finished edges before binding because it kept puffing at the edge while I was stitching the binding on. It was a little annoying, but the quilt got bound.

So there was this week's cheerful quilty session, which was much needed since classes also started this week. Along with all the January, I needed the cheerful!

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend, and that it is colorful and not gray. If it is gray, I prescribe yellow stars. Almost always makes me cheerful!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished or not Friday, and the Quilting, Patchwork, Applique linkup, too. 

Masala baby

 (There is a giveaway at the bottom of this post for those who are interested!) 

Hi everyone! Odd to hear from me on a Monday, I know, but my friend Preeti has a new pattern that I tested for her, and it's my pleasure to share it with you today. The pattern is called Masala Box, and it makes a very fast and easy quilt that turns out to be striking no matter what colors you make it in. I made the baby size, because I knew it would be a donation quilt, and had a good time creating it. Take a look:

 

I told you it was striking! It's kind of modern and kind of traditional, with no difficult piecing. I like to think it looks vaguely Caribbean in my colors, with some bright colors of the ocean, sky and sun. This bright little baby quilt measures about 40 by 40. For this size, you need less than a yard of the background and some colorful scraps, so it's a very economical quilt to make as well. You could easily dig every bit out of your scraps if you had some bigger pieces.

 

I backed this fun little quilt with a bright green polka dot, then quilted it with bright green thread using my walking foot. It's bound by machine with a bright turquoise solid. I goofed around and half watched a movie while I made this, and it still only took me an afternoon, with quilting the next afternoon. Not bad for a whole little quilt.

I made my quilt with individual squares, which cleaned out a lot of them, but the pattern is strip pieced, so it's much easier than the one I made. As I said above, the quilt looks great in almost any colors, and I bet it would look terrific with a really wild background print and solid squares, or in all neutrals. The centers could also be used for embroidery or thread painting, or you could have people write messages there, for a wedding, graduation, or quinceanera quilt. (Why can't I get a tilde so that's spelled correctly? Anyone know how to insert those letters on Blogger?)

You can purchase the pattern in Preeti's Etsy shop and start making your quilt right away, but here's your chance to win a pattern, with no effort other than leaving me a comment! Leave a comment below, and just for fun, let me know what color combo you think would look good in this pattern. What colors would you make it in, or for what occasion? I will use the random number generator thingy to choose a random winner the morning of  Saturday, October 16th. 

 

The giveaway is now closed! Congratulations to Connie, and thanks to all!

Hope you all have a good week, with lots of sewing time and some other kinds of relaxation. I'll be teaching all week, and finishing the border on another quilt. Come back Friday for another exciting episode!