The Little Bird Quilt

My sister is due with a baby girl in March and everyone is my family is pretty excited about it especially since 6 little boys have been born to my family in the past 5 years.  I'm pretty excited about having another excuse to delve into the world of little girl sewing since I have 2 little boys of my own.

A couple of weeks ago, I walked into my local quilt shop not intending to buy very much.  But then I spotted the cutest fabric line that has just come in - "Little Bird" by Camelot Fabrics.  Instantly I could envision the cutest baby quilt.  So much for not buying much. ;)

I pulled in a Kona solid ("Ice Frappe") and a light grey crosshatch I had in stash to help fill out the fabric I bought and before I knew it, I had a simple equilateral triangle quilt cut out, sewn together and ready for quilting.

Since this is a quilt that I hope will grow with my niece for several years, I backed it with a soft minky cuddle fabric in mint.  I love backing quilts in minky cuddle fabric - yes, it takes more effort to worth with, but the end result is so worth it!  The quilting was done in a light pink thread in a simple meander which helped to soften the sharp geometric pattern of the triangles.  Fresh out of the dryer - this quilt is to die for soft and oh so snuggly!

Oh and how cute is this striped print for the binding?!

Now, I can't wait to get to meet my new niece in March. :)

I posted about this baby quilt over on Instagram last weekend and the lovely people over at Camelot Fabrics saw it and so graciously asked if they could feature it on their blog! Ummm, yes please! You can find their feature here. Thank you Camelot Fabrics!! :)

The Scrappy Flutterby Quilt

 Sometimes, you have a to do list a mile long of things you should be working on. And sometimes, that to do list seems stifling and uninspiring.  So sometimes, when a quilt block catches your eye, you stop everything and delve into your scrap bin and make a quilt just because you can.  This is what gets those creative juices flowing again.  And that was me this week. 

I had seen this lovely Flutterby block pop up on my Instagram feed and it was love at first sight!  I couldn't get it out of my head, so I ordered the book "Quilt Lovely" by Jen Kingwell which came in the mail this past Saturday, and by Sunday evening I had made my first test block for the Flutterby quilt.  I was even more in love with this quilt!  So even though there was a to do list of things I should be doing, this quilt jumped straight to the top of the list even though it has no end purpose other than I wanted to make it.

Tuesday was a snow day for us, which meant I was able to dump my scrap bin out on the kitchen table and get another 8 blocks plus the boarder cut out.  Gotta love when a quilt comes together all from stash like this one - especially when it makes a dent (albeit a rather small one) in my scrap bin.  The cute owl print that I used on the backing was even from my stash!

Wednesday saw the blocks being sewn into a quilt top and the boarders being sewn on.  And on Thursday, I managed to get the quilt basted, quilted up with my new favorite quilting ever - a simple stripple, and even bound.  I had a lot of fun binding this quilt as I pulled out my basket of binding scraps I've been saving and pieced together a bunch of them to making a scrappy binding that matched the scrappy vibe this quilt has. 

By Friday morning, all I had left was to sew on my label and run it through the wash.  Gotta love fresh out of the dryer crinkly goodness.  :)  Somehow the kids and the sun were both behaving at the same time this afternoon, so I dashed outside to snap a few pictures of this super bright quilt. 

I love the contrast of this cheery quilt against the snow and the long ice-cycles. 

And now, I even managed to get a blog post put together and up on my blog while it's still Friday afternoon!  And and and - I think I decided to put this quilt up for sale in my Etsy shop because while I LOVE this quilt, I don't really need it either. ;)  You can find the listing for it here.  This has got to be a new record! :) 

Linking up with Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday! Happy Weekend, ya'll!

The Oldest Work in Progress Quilt

By this point, I've made quite a few quilts (I really need to catch up on my list so I can tell just how many). But somehow, my poor husband was still suffering along with a sadly too short tied fleece blanket.  He loves it though because the fleece is a dragon print, but still - way too short! And it was starting to look a bit out of place on the coach with all the pretty throw quilts and quilted pillows I've been making and adding onto the coach. It was time to get this guy a quilt!

Now, let me take you back - way way way back to April 2013 to that time when I made these throw pillows for my husband.  Yeah....that was a while ago.  Well, anyways, I never liked those pillows - they turned out smaller than what I had wanted and so they weren't really of much use as actual throw pillows on the coach.  And so I stuffed them into a box and forgot about them for a while (my poor husband...).  Finally, before Christmas 2014, I decided that I would cut apart those pillows and turn them into a quilt for my husband which would be a little bit more useful. Well, that certainly didn't happen in time for that Christmas or for his birthday that following spring.  Finally, I was determined to finish his quilt in time for Christmas 2015.  And I did - sort of.  I got the quilt top all pieced together in time for this past Christmas, so on Christmas morning my husband opened a box with just a quilt top in it.  haha....yeah, he's such a good sport and loved it even though it wasn't finished (and was like oh, that's where those pillows went!). 

But it all worked out because my husband wanted to have a say in picking out the backing and naturally he went with an ultra cuddle minky backing.  I even tried my hand at doing woodgrain free motion quilting on his quilt - thanks to some inspiration from Christina Lane over at Sometimes Crafter. I LOVE how the quilting turned out and it really helped to take a quilt I was feeling meehhh about and turned it into a pretty fab quilt!

 I finished this quilt up last weekend and it has all ready seen quite a bit of loving from my husband and the kids and myself while on the coach.  It feels really good to finally gift my husband his very own quilt and to also finally clear out one of my very oldest work in progress projects.  Although, I did learn a few things while finishing up this quilt - most importantly to never ever leave a quilt half finished for so long because I'll fall out of love with it as my tastes change!  However, even if I have fallen out of love with it, my husband does love it and that is what matters. :)

My Bee Hive Quilt

 At the start of last year, I joined an online quilting bee called The Bee Hive Quilts (you can find out more about it here).  I was paired with 11 other women, we were each assigned a month over the next year to be the "queen bee", and off we went.  It was so fun each month to make a quilt block picked by the queen bee that reflected their different personalities and tastes.  All told I ended up making 24 quilt blocks for the ladies in the bee hive.  I can really see an evolution of my skills throughout the year - my piecing got more precise and my fabric choices got more refined as the year went long.  Below is a compilation of the 24 blocks that I made:

Finally in September, it was my month!! It took me forever to pick a quilt block and the colors I wanted, but I finally settled on the spinwheel block with white, gray, black, and 3 shades of blue placed specially in the block.  Here were some example blocks that I made up to show fabric color placement.

 By this point 8 of the 11 ladies I had started the year with were left and each one of those 8 ladies made me 1 or 2 blocks and sent them my way along with some sweet goodies and extras.  I loved opening reach and every package as I knew that each one had been made with care and thoughtfulness.  Finally, I had all my blocks, but by then craft show sewing and Christmas gift sewing had kicked into high gear.  Well, now it's the new year and I was determined to turn that pile of blocks into a finished quilt. So up on design wall they went where I figured out the layout, how many blocks I still needed to make, and what kind of boarder to add.

 Finally on Thursday on this past week, I got the top all sewn together, the back pieced (extra soft minky fabric!), and it basted.  I was going to wait to quilt it because I had been promising my husband to get his quilt finished up, but that sweety knew how much this quilt meant to me and let me jump my quilt to the top of the pile.  Thursday night I stayed up way too late getting it quilted with a simple all over stripple. And then Friday morning, I got the quilt trimmed, bound, labeled and in the washer.  I had to wait until today (Saturday) for my husband to be around to hold it up for me to get pictures of it (again - such a sweety!!).

And now, this gorgeous and beautiful quilt lives on my coach where it'll be loved and snuggled with nearly ever day.

I know this post is getting a bit long, but if you want to hear a bit more about why this quilt means so much to me, then keep reading.  Don't say you weren't warned though.

Ok, I'm gonna let you in on something I don't normally talk about, but it'll help to give some context as to why this quilt means so very much to me.  See, I struggle with depression and anxiety. I went through a particularly rough stretch of anti-partum depression while I was pregnant with our 2nd boy just after we had made a cross-country move. Not fun.  I still struggle with some form of depression and anxiety on a daily basis.  And before y'all get "helpful" let me just say that yes, I see a therapist regularly, I'm not suicidal, and I'm not "just sad". In fact, most days, I'm good. Life is good. I'm surrounded by good and I'm so very blessed and I can see all of that. But some days, it's a struggle just to breathe.  And most days, even on the good days, the nagging darkness is lurking in the background just waiting to swallow me up.  I don't usually talk about it because it's a very personal struggle that can and has caused so much pain.  But anyways, back to the context. I say all this to say, when I'm having a hard day, it's hard for me to remember the good, to remember that I'm loved, to remember that I'm cared for. So to have this gorgeous quilt finished and on the coach where I can see it every day means so much to me.  This quilt so beautifully speaks to me in so many ways - the colors, the fabrics, the interlocking pinwheels, the meandering quilting, the deliciously soft and cuddly backing - all combined into something so perfect.  But the most important thing this quilt says is that I'm cared for - I matter.  Eight lovely ladies who started out as complete strangers, over the course of a year, have become dear friends who so lovingly took the time to make 12 beautiful quilt blocks just for me.  Those blocks are each special and unique, yet they all joined so beautiful and cohesively together to make the center 12 blocks in this quilt.  I'm so humbled and honored by their generosity and thoughtfulness, and this quilt will always make me feel like I'm getting a hug wherever I use it. 

 Thank you dear friends!!

Why I Quilt

Something pretty cool happened this week for the local quilt guild that I'm a part of - we made the local news for our charity quilt project!  We made and donated over 130 quilts in 2015 to various organizations in the area (over 8 of those were quilts I had made and donated, and you can see a few of them here).  Several of these organizations (such as the Benzie Council on Aging, Benzie County Fire Departments and EMS, The Lighthouse Neurological Rehabilitation Center. Munson Hospice House, and Munson NIC Unit and Pediatrics) are places that have a continual need for more quilts so the guild is planning on making quarterly donations to those places throughout 2016.
Here's one of the comfort quilts that I helped to finish just this month (pieced by another member in the quilt guild, quilted and bound by me).

It's pretty exciting to be a part of something like this and to find a way to make a small difference in the lives of people in my community with the sewing and quilting skills that I've been given.  If you want to check out the full news story, you can find it here.

In Que

In honor of WIP Wednesday (hosted by Lee over on Freshly Pieced), I thought I'd post some of my current wips.
After sewing like a crazy person for most of the fall and leading up to Christmas for craft shows and Christmas gifts, I unofficially officially declared January to be the month of sewing and quilting the quilts I want to work on which usually get shoved to the bottom in the to do list including a few for myself just because.  There have been a few other small projects mixed in - mostly baby shower gifts and a few custom orders for Etsy.  So anyways, as of right now, I have 7 quilts (mostly twin sized or larger) in the que that I'm actively working on - because yes, I find it impossible to work in just one thing at a time ;)

So here there are (sorry for the kind of crappy photos...).  I'm hoping to have most of them quilted and in use within the next few weeks. I even have all of the fabric for backing and bindings and thread I need so hopefully i can get then done without having to wait for something. Wish me luck! 

First up, this quilt had been in progress for a while - namely , I think it's my oldest work in progress (WIP). It's for my husband and I finally got the quilt top finished in time for Christmas this year.  It's weird to work on a quilt that I started so long ago because my tastes have really changed and I can see a definite improvement in my skill as well.  

Next up is this twin sized quilt for my youngest son.  I'm actually ahead of the game on this one because it's for when he moves into a big boy bed which hopefully shouldn't be for another 6-8 months.  

After 6 boys being born on my side of the family in the last 5 years, one of my sisters is expecting a baby girl in March!  Naturally, I had to make her a quilt especially when I saw this fabric in my local quilt shop. 

And then I have 4 quilts in making just for myself.  My dear sweet husband says we all ready have too many quilts.  Silly man - you can never have too many beautiful quilts around. ;) I just won't tell him about all the quilts I have placed in my head! ;)
First up, this beauty which will be a new queen sized quilt for our bed.

Then this maple leaf one which I started last spring and was supposed to be done and on there coach by this past fall.  Oh well - fall 2016 here it comes!

I also want to finish up my quilt from the quilting bee I was a part of this past year.  I finished piecing the last 2 blocks I needed, so I just need to assemble and decide on boarders.

And finally, I got a jelly roll of winterberry fabric before Christmas and i finally settled on a pattern to use to make myself a Christmas quilt for Christmas 2016.  Here's the start of it that I threw up in the design wall to get an idea of how it would look.

So yeah, just a few wips I want to get finished up soon as I've got some big things planned this year that'll including sewing samples for my local quilt shop, selling some of my things in another shop in Traverse City, and getting a head start for craft shows (so I'm not stress sewing at the last minute!). Wish me luck!  

Let It Snow

Compared to the last 2 winters that we have had here in northern Michigan, you could almost say that this winter had been downright mild.  The previous 2 winters, it started snowing the end of October and just did not stop until March/April/May.  Well, this year, we got pretty lucky in that the snow didn't really start to accumulate until after Christmas.  But now, the snow is definitely coming down with no signs of stopping.  That's all right - it's kind of pretty and at least for today, I don't have anywhere I need to be.

In honor of all the snow that's coming down, I decided to make a snowflake hanging sign thing to put on our sadly bare front door.  I'd seen a few other people post on Instagram about cutting out snowflakes from paper and appliqueing them onto fabric.  Out came the Heat and Bond, some super stiff interfacing I had on hand and some pretty white on white, blue and gray fabrics.

It was really quite fun to make especially since I cheated on the applique and just stuck it down with matchstick quilting - no way was I going to outline all those edges!!

Ta-da - a much prettier front door and a quick fun finish too! :)

The Wedding Quilt

You know those couples who were "friends" for forever and then finally got together and started dating and then finally they actually do what we all knew all along they were meant to do - they get married.  Yup, we all know couples like that.  When we received the wedding invitation in the mail this summer for just such a couple that my husband and I have known since college, I knew that I wanted to do something special for them as a wedding gift.  When we decided because of life and whatnot that we weren't going to be able to make the long road trip to actually be there to attend their wedding, I was even more motivated to make a special gift for them.  So I decided to tackle my first big quilt gift for someone outside my family.  Yes, I know - I've made buckets of quilts by now but most of them are small/baby sized quilts and any of the larger quilts I have made, I've either kept myself or were gifts for my family.  A little intimidating, but them again, I do love a challenge sometimes. 

 After perusing our friends' wedding registry and picking my husband's brain and tons of brainstorming (i.e. hours on Pinterest and Instagram and with a sketch pad), I came up with a plan to do a half square triangle quilt and I picked Kona colors that were reflective of our friends' color tastes - Kona Iron and Kona Bahama Blue for the front of the quilt with Kona Mediterranean for the binding.  And because I had been dying to have an excuse to purchase Tula Pink's new Freefall wide back fabric, I decided to use some of it in the battleship color way for the backing on the quilt. 

 

The quilt turned out perfect and let's just say it was a hard one to let go of.  I added this special label to the back of the quilt wishing the newlyweds all the best.

Since the quilt was intended to be a throw quilt on the coach, naturally I had to make 2 matching throw pillows. 

Anyways, it was a pleasure to take a piece of my heart and passion and sew it into something beautiful that will grace a newly-wedded couple's home. :)

And yes...I know I'm a bit late on posting this - like 4 months late. =D

Christmasy Pillow

So I'm going to call this one a really early sewing project for Christmas 2016.  ;) 

At the end of November, I made a big batch of Christmas hexagon coasters that I used as teacher and friend gifts and I even kept a couple for myself as well.  When I cut out at the hexagons for the coasters, there was a stack of perfectly cut 2.5" equilateral triangles.  I tucked them away hoping to do something with them dice I hate to throw out good scraps.  Well, December flew by in a blur of sewing mostly for Christmas gifts and I didn't get a chance to do anything with them until after the New Year.

After things started to settle down and I had had an appropriate break from sewing like a crazy person, I decided that January was going to have a lot of sewing just for myself kind of projects.  So I pulled out those triangles and started sewing.  I ended up having just enough of them to make an 18" throw pillow cover.

 I love how it turned out and I'm a bit sad that it'll be going in a box for a while with the other Christmas decorations.  But, it'll be a lovely treat to be able to pull it out next Christmas and have it sitting happily on my coach.  :)