Positively Coastal

A friend of mine from when I was in high school is having a baby boy -- his first child.  I wanted to make him something special -- something I would love too.  I am much better at girl quilts.  I have five boys, and our house is filled with girly quilts.  So I was a little worried about whether I had the necessary boyish fabrics to make the perfect quilt.  I have to say, I feel successful.  I LOVE this quilt.  

I used the backing fabrics as my guide and just pulled fabrics from my stash in those colors.  I could not be happier with the result.

I'm kind of wishing I had more of these fabrics so I could make a throw-sized one of these babies.  I hope my friend and his wife like it.  (Otherwise, I'll ask for it back . . .  just kidding, mostly.)

Pattern is here.

Linking with Amanda Jean's Finish it up Friday.

Finally!

This is one of those shameful WIPs that have been sitting around FORever, quilted but unbound.  The center is all that was left over from this quilt -- first round of ORB quilt-alongs.

I was afraid of the scalloped edge.  I wasn't quite sure how I wanted it to look.  And I was quite sure I was going to mess it up.  Yesterday, I bit the bullet and just did it.  It was an easy one to get off my list.  I don't love it.  The corners are too tight.  I should have made a rounder scallop.  I'm wishing I had done a little more on the long sides.  Now I'm even wishing I had interspersed some of the border fabric with the squares and made it look like the squares were breaking out of the box.  (Sigh)  However, it's done.  And it's off my list.  And it will snuggle a sweet baby girl very nicely. 

I can't even remember what fabric line this backing is from.  I think it was an old Robin Pandolph line, but I can't even recall.  It's just what was left of whatever fabrics I used for the front (and the other quilt).  Three cheers for a WIP that is no longer hanging over my head!!

Linking up with Amanda Jean's Finish it up Friday tomorrow!

Oops!!

I noticed this after I put this as my blog header.  Two circles in from the right (my right as I'm looking at it) there is a place that is UNQUILTED.  Lime green with white polka dots next to pink with white squarish polka dots.  How did I miss this?  Not just the quilting, but then afterwards as I was photographing it!

Do you see it?  Crazy.

 All fixed.

 Do you see it now?  Nope?  Good.  

Soothing Whirligig

YEARS ago I made this top when Amanda Jean made hers.  (Tutorial here.)  I know.  I know.  I reference her a lot.  I made A LOT of her quilts in the past, and I am now getting around to finishing them.  It's just how it's going to go.

You can see that I made some cutting mistakes -- trying to be fast and cutting two at once.  I originally started as a garment seamstress (amateur only, of course), so cutting things out with right sides together is my default.  This method, of course, does NOT work when making whirligig blocks.  That's just a little tip from me to you.

You get them going in opposite directions.  So I made more than I had originally planned, ran a white border around three sides and put the opposite blocks around the outside.

I suppose if I never point these things out, they might go unnoticed, but this isn't the first time.  THIS is the first time I messed these up.  (Success stories here and here.)

 Jumbled up, can't see the mistakes.

 Santorini print on the back.

Momo's It's a Hoot green dot for the binding again.  Perfect.  This quilt is one that my oldest daughter will be taking to college with her in a month.  Finished EARLY!  What?!  Motivation, I guess.

Linking up with Amanda Jean's Finish It Up Friday.  Thanks for stopping by.  Maybe next week I'll show you some UNfinished projects.  We know have a ton of those . . .  In the meantime, happy quilting!

Summer Song Pinwheel Redux

I made one of these before with leftovers from an as yet unfinished quilt.  There were enough leftovers to make two sweet baby quilts.  The fabric is Summer Song by My Mind's Eye for Riley Blake (with a few random things from my stash thrown in).

A Pezzy back (and a boy's silhouette).

Binding is from Momo's It's a Hoot.  I love this dot in all colors.  I recently found some at my LQS.  I bought it in the green and the blue.  Oh, and the gray.  I have already bound another quilt in the green, and I used the blue and green for the back of another quilt.  It is just perfect as a binding.  I think I have enough to bind one more big quilt with it.  And then maybe I'll have to go buy more.

I just quilted it with an all-over stipple in the interest of gittin' 'er done.  Finished quilt is 36" x 45" -- perfect baby-snuggling size.

I will be linking up with Amanda Jean's Finish it up Friday when Friday rolls around.  Happy Quilting!

Modified Bento Box a la Ashley

A few years ago, Ashley made a quilt like this with Flea Market Fancy.  I loved her colors, so I tried to mimic hers here.  Mine quilt is a little brighter than her soft color palette, but I still like the effect.  Again, I have a crazy wash of color.

 (One boy is shorter than the other.)

 I used scrap strips for the front, so I didn't have much of anything left to go on the back.

 I love the optical illusion that this pattern creates.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday with Amanda Jean.  Again.  Feast or famine around here.

Running in Circles

This quilt is from Amanda Jean's Running in Circles quilt.  I've decided I need some white or some kind of rest for your eye.  Sometimes I can't tell how it's going to turn out until I actually see it.  I do like quilts where there's just a wash of colors, but this one might be too busy.  I can't tell.

 Busy or not, I still like it.

 Pieced back.

Spiral quilting in the circles, tiny stippling around it.

The colors look more pastel (and really, truer) here in these pictures -- more sunlight, guess.  

I made the binding for this weeks ago, and it has just been sitting around waiting for me to have a spare moment.  And there it was this morning.  I'm not sure if I'm keeping this or sending it to my niece.  When she was a baby, I did not send her a quilt (long-ish story, bad time in my life), so now that she's three or so, maybe she needs a big-girl quilt.  But first, I have to finish the one for her new baby sister that's coming this fall.  The list goes on and on.  And on.  Happy Quilting!

I'm linking up to Amanda Jean's Finish it up Friday.  Hooray!!!

Another addiction . . .

Being in Connecticut has its perks.  I'm two hours from Boston, and I'm two hours from NYC.  Well, last week, I met a friend in the city for the day, but before his flight came in, I took myself to Purl Soho.  I was there at least an  hour coveting all their gorgeous yarn.  And their selection of Liberty of London fabrics was A-mazing.  If you have a chance to go, you should.

I was good and only bought two skeins of yarn.  In my signature color, of course.

But I'll be back for more.  Don't you worry about that.  ;)

Before I can break into those beautiful balls of yarn, I should really finish this lovely.  Alpaca -- so soft.

And I should finish these socks.  I actually am doing toe-up two-at-a-time socks for the first time.  I have already taken one pair of partials off of this circular needle.  I know once I get the hang of it, I'll be glad I learned how, but right now, I am less than motivated to work with these, because the cables on the circular needles flip all over the place and are in the way.

Luckily, it's summer right now, so it's too hot for these socks.  I have some time to get over my frustration and soldier on.

Anybody knitting anything this summer?  No?  Just me?

Caught Up

Sorry I missed last week.  Between eye surgeries (not mine), doctor's appointments (not mine), and wisdom teeth removal (again, not mine), things have been pretty hectic here.  Nonetheless, here we are . . .

Four new ones. 

And the six all together.  Look at that.  So far, so good.  I'm not going to lie.  I'm a little distressed at the lack of perfection going on here, because Anina's are so. much. better.  I'm thinking I'll continue to improve, but if not, then in the end, nobody look too closely.  In fact, don't look too closely now.

I'm thinking maybe I should really show you some of the other things I've been working on.  

Anybody else Dear Jane-ing?

Baby Jane, A-1 and A-2

This is the inaugural Dear Jane block post at The Bossy Quilter!   Here is the start of my Baby Jane (how imitations of the original Dear Jane quilt are referred to).

I actually made block A-2 first.  It's supposed to be 5" unfinished.  It's a little smaller than that.  So when I made block A-1, I thought I would be more careful and not sew over my little freezer paper pieces.  Block A-1 ended up to be 5 1/2" unfinished.  I trimmed it down a little, but if I trim it down too much, I'll lose the points of my triangles.  I may have to remake it or make some seams a little larger.  For now I'm leaving it alone -- until I figure out how to be more accurate, I don't want to be remaking any blocks.

Fabrics are Kona white for the background and Marmalade by Bonnie and Camille for the prints.

I've been using the freezer paper template method suggested in the book, but I may try to do some paper piecing on the next two -- see if I can be more accurate.  I should probably go read Anina's That Quilt blog and get some pointers from her.  I'll get better.  I do like the way they look, though.  I wonder if Jill has posted her blocks yet.

The Time Has Come

This is it!  This is the week.  Now, we all know that I'm really good at starting things, but not so good at finishing.  Jill, however, is good at finishing things.  Maybe she can keep me in line!

I'm going to start with the center squares and do the wedges last.  I am going to start at A-1 and go in order.  This will definitely be a long-term project, but with Jill in my corner, I have high hopes for its success.

You can see I'm have a FQ pack of Marmalade by Bonnie and Camille.  That is a bolt of Kona White for my background.  I plan to largely use the Marmalade, but I will pull from my other Bonnie and Camille scraps to match.  And I know that when their new line, Scrumptious, comes out, I will be snapping it up too!

See you Thursday with my two finished blocks, A-1 and A-2!

Baby Jane Quilt-Along

For Jill's birthday last year I got her this.  And I got one for myself too.  

The idea was that I would finish my Farmer's Wife Quilts, and then I would start this.  Well, that was a lovely ambition, but they're not done, and Jane is tired of waiting.  So in we dive.  We will be starting the week of March 4th, doing one a week.  Or maybe two.  We didn't completely decide on a number.  I realize we're not the first to do this.  Anina has an entirely separate blog devoted to her Baby Jane.  So I guess you could say we're jumping on the bandwagon.

I have decided to do mine out of Bonnie and Camille scraps/fabrics with Kona White as my background.  I'm hoping that now that I am past my technical difficulties (new sewing machine) and past my gigantic move (TX to CT), I will be able to be more devoted to my second love.   (My first love is my family, people.)  

So my plan is to post my block(s) on Thursday.  I have not discussed this aspect with Jill yet, but I hope she's amenable to that.  If you'd like to work along with us, that would be great.  You can purchase the book directly from the Dear Jane website, or you can go on Amazon.  If anyone -- or even someone -- joins in, maybe I could start a Mr. Linky on here.  If it's just Jill and I, we're okay with that too.  See you in two weeks for the reminder post!

A Masculine Quilt . . . Finally

I know I am slow.  I take FOREVER to finish things.  I can't say exactly why.  Maybe I just enjoy the process so  much.  Once a quilt is finished, then I don't get to continue to savor it.  I don't know if this is true.  I'm trying to figure out what my issue is.  Quilting ADD?  Anyway, here is a finish that has been a long time coming.

In fact, it has been so long, that I no longer can give you the source for this quilt.  I made it from a pattern in a magazine using all my different blue plaid scraps.  Which magazine it was, I cannot tell you.  If I find it at some point, I will add it on here.

This is for my oldest son's bed.  I made another top just like it to go on the bed of the brother he was sharing a room with at the time I started these (four years ago, maybe).  They were both twin-sized.  Well, now he shares a room with TWO brothers who are on the full-sized bottom bunk.  So I had to make the other flimsy a little bigger.  Now it needs a back and some quilting.

 My son loves it, though, so I guess it was worth the wait.  He's 16, and it's still a good size for him.  Whew!

Straight-line quilting in the middle of the quilt, with low, wide stippling around the border.  The straight-line quilting always looks nice and always takes forever.  As much as I don't want to, I'm going to have to do the next one the same way.  I'd better go make the back for it today and get cracking before they all grow up and move away.

I'm linking up with Amanda Jean's Finish It Up Friday.  Again.  I'm so proud of myself.  This is three times now!  This might turn into the year of the finish after all.  Dang.  Did I just jinx myself?

Happy Quilting!

Re-finish

I cannot for the life of me find the "before" pictures of these dressers.  Let's just say they were stained a medium brown.  Not that pretty -- and the knobs were white ceramic.

I picked a blue that matched the baseball quilts in this room and just painted them.  I was planning to try to make my own blue stain, but since the previous stain didn't come all the way off, there were going to be darker patches in some places than others.  So paint it was.

I couldn't find any vertical pulls with the same measurements as these, so I didn't replace them.  They're not my favorite, but I just found some brass knobs with a similar patina and called it good.

The two little boys were previously using two (extremely) old two-drawer end tables and a plastic three-drawer storage thing.  Free dressers, $25 paint, $12 knobs = no more problems with space.  And no, their room is never this clean.

Rainbow Sherbet

This is an oldie.  The peach/orangey (large inside border) stripe was one of the first high-quality fabrics I ever purchased.  I bought it at the Dallas Quilt Show from one of the vendors.  My friend Judy is the one who took me, who helped me hone my quilting skills, who turned me into a fabric hoarder.  Okay, okay.  She gave me the nudge.  The hoarding was latent inside of me.

Anyway, I used that stripe as a jumping off point to choose colors for the rest of the quilt.  It started to remind me of rainbow sherbet, but now that it's all finished, it reminds me of fire (minus the green)

This center medallion was a Block of the Moment from Judy Martin.  It's not there now, but I printed it when it was.  Just to clarify, Judy Martin is not the Judy who took me to the Dallas Quilt Show.  (Ha!  I wish!)  She is amazing at putting patterns/blocks together.

I quilted a flower in each of the stars and spirals in the rest of the blocks.  I just did a loopy meander around the outer borders.  Sometimes I get in default and just do a stipple or a loop, but I really enjoy the quilts where I do deliberate things that accent the blocks themselves.  That just takes longer, and I have a ridiculous volume to try to whittle down.

In the name of using what I had (and also because by the time I got around to quilting it, the top had been finished for YEARS), I just found whatever matching random strips  that I had.  I don't love the back, but it'll do.  And it's one more quilt that I can take out of my brain.

This was a quilt where I mixed quality of fabrics, so we'll see how they fade.  Usually the cheaper fabrics fade more quickly, so I'm sure I'll see differences in that.  I made this at a when I didn't know better.  ;)  It feels really good to finish an older project, though, and it will still keep us warm!