Baby Girl Quilt for Olivia

This commission quilt was made for a coworker and friend who is expecting her first grandchild. One of the requirements was that it not have too much pink as the mom is not fond of all pink for her baby girl. However, purple was most definitely acceptable and I was fortunate to find this cozy cotton flannel fat quarter bundle by Studio RK for Robert Kaufman. Another request was to personalize the quilt with the baby's full name. I "purpled out" the last name for security reasons. 

Typically, I print a label onto fabric using my inkjet printer but the printer is permanently out of service so we went for something a little more rustic. I hand printed the message using a fine point Sharpie on a white broadcloth. It is a square of fabric folded on the diagonal and stitched into the binding. The printing is off center on purpose so that specific birth information can be added later. I included a scrap of the white fabric for writing practice and some tips for writing on fabric.

The quilt design stayed simple since flannel is thicker than typical quilting cotton and I wanted to be careful not to create bulky seams. The name is fused and machine appliqued to the quilt top. Special thanks to Wendi at Shiny Happy World who offers a free applique alphabet called Shiny Happy Words. It was perfect for this quilt.

The quilt is machine quilted with flowers surrounding the name and a simpler meander over the rest of the quilt. If I were to do anything differently for this quilt, it would be to use something other than flannel for the binding. It was really bulky and difficult to work with.

Since I have been on a bit of a sewing break, it was nice to spend some time at the sewing machine for this project. Every sweet baby girl needs a special quilt to welcome them to this world.

Easy Baby Quilt With Nature In Mind

 I'm going to a baby shower this weekend for a coworker who is about to be a first time grandmother. When she first told us the news, she added that she had already purchased baby items with a camouflage and a John Deere theme. 

That meant this quilt had to represent the outdoors as best I could.

This almost camo fabric was the inspiration for all the others. At first there were some bolder prints in there but they were too distracting. The subtle prints in browns, greens, and golds did the trick.

Each block includes a 5x8 inch rectangle of color and a 2x8 inch strip of background sewn to each side. The blocks finish at 7 1/2 inches square. Two inch strips of background are an added border. The quilt finishes at 39 inches square.

The quilting is a super easy free motion meander with a light green thread on top and a variegated thread on bottom. The backing is a light green stripe from one of Nancy Halvorsen's collections.

I did not have enough of any one fabric from the center to use for binding so I used two and alternated them to finish off the quilt.

Spring has decided to stop teasing us and hang around for a while. The backyard bird activity has really picked up. It's a great time of year to enjoy the birds and all things outdoors.

Sleepy Fox - A Finished Quilt

This quilt started as a pursuit for a baby quilt for a coworker. She has a woodland themed nursery in gray and teal. This is her first child. When I was seeking out information about what she would like, the first animal mentioned in the description was a fox. I'm not even sure I heard any other animal that was named. A fox is what I wanted to make.

So off I went to find the perfect woodland fox quilt inspiration. I did not want cutesy or realistic. I wanted sweet. And then I found this blog post by 3rd Story Workshop. Not only was I in love with the quilt but also drawn to the designer. I did not want to be inspired by her quilt, I wanted to make a replica of it. And fortunately, she generously shares her fabric choices and her techniques.

I typically like to use as much stash as possible for any project but this time was different. I went shopping and matched as closely as I could the quilt she made. The fox is paper pieced and was easy to construct. Fox colors are among my favorite so anytime rusts and oranges are in the mix, I am extra delighted.

The birch trees on the original quilt were improv pieced. There is even a tutorial for how to construct them. I was intimidated by these trees. I love some good improv but generally any improv I have tried before was abstract. This improv was actually supposed to look like birch trees. I studied the tutorial and studied her quilt. These trees were constructed at around one a day, and each day I had to tell myself to keep moving forward. A tree alone looks very strange but together in a forest, maybe it would work out. This is the pep talk I gave myself each day during this process. 

It wasn't until the background was added that I started to see that it really might work out. The black strip was to show where the horizon line should be. Because the trees were gently curved and leaning one way or another, each background piece was scissor cut and carefully stitched in so the trees could maintain their natural stance in the quilt.

Finally, the top was completed. At this point, I was cautiously optimistic.

The next step was to hand stitch some eyes on the fox and then to layer the quilt. If this had been my own design, the is where I would have choked. How should this be quilted? The trees, the sky, the ground, the fox... so many elements to quilt. Thankfully, 3rd Story Workshop went with an all over design using wood grain quilting. Please, yes, and thank you for that.

This is a quilting design I had not tried before, but as the quilt was evolving, I was studying. There are quilts on Pinterest, and tutorials galore. The most helpful one for me was Angela Walter's Three Common Mistakes When Quilting the Woodgrain Design. I bet I watched that video five or six times, which is good because I made all three mistakes at some point on this quilt and was able to quickly correct them. 

I was even able to find the same backing fabric as the original quilt. It is so perfect.

The only aspect of the quilt that I did not copy was the binding. Andrea of 3rd Story Workshop used white binding just on the corner where the fox is sleeping. I liked the design element, but I knew the recipient of this quilt would not appreciate the extra effort so I kept it simple and bound the quilt with the same blue that is the sky. You might also say I was being a bit lazy with that step. I was ready to see the finished quilt.

What I love most about this project is that it pushed me to try new things. This one helped me grow as a quilter and conquer some of that irrational fear that creeps into my quilting world from time to time.

This quilt took 19 hours to complete. It was started on February 1 and completed on February 17. It is 39 x 46 inches. Sleepy Fox will be gifted at a baby shower on March 5.

Linking to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Purple Baby Heart Quilt - First 2018 Quilt Finish

This sweet quilt was not even on my list of quilty goals for the year, yet here it is. Two of my coworkers are expecting babies this Spring. One of them is having an early baby shower since a super big work deadline is approaching for her team and time for baby showers will become scarce. I don't know her that well so I asked some of her closer work buddies what she might like. Without skipping a beat, I learned that "she really likes purple". That is all I needed to know.

My purple stash is not large so I pulled all of them and sorted them into blue purples and red purples, then I asked my teen design expert which set I should use. He told me to go with the red purples as they were brighter and more fun for babies. Originally, this newsprint fabric was going to be the background but I changed my mind once I decided on a design.

As often happens, there was a quilt on Pinterest I liked. It was all half square triangles and four-patches so it would be easy to scale to a good baby quilt size. Each half square triangle finishes at four inches. There are 114 half square triangles in this quilt so there was lots of squaring up going on.

Once the squaring up job was complete, I played around with the layout for the heart. All those trimmings were loosely tied into two bundles and hung from trees in the backyard. The birds like them for nest building and they will certainly be weathered and soft by the time the birds are ready for them.

Here's the full layout of the quilt. The color placement is random and there was enough variety among the purples that hardly any rearranging was required.

This was so much fun to quilt. I think I say that about every quilt I make and it is so true. There is a cross hatch grid on the heart, straight lines to echo the purple rows, and swirls in all the white space.

I was even brave and used a lilac thread for the swirls. It shows just a little more than a matching thread would show. In fact, I ran out of the lilac thread and had to quilt the top and bottom triangles with cream thread. It is not noticeable in the finished quilt.

This quilt is made entirely from stash. The fabric for the front and back, the batting, the thread, and the binding are all stash. I was very excited about that.

I love the heart. It is a perfect welcome for a new baby.

The pieced backing was a surprise as I originally thought I had enough in one piece of fabric. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull it off, but I found the darker purple pieces on a late round of stash hunting.

For the first time this year, I am tracking my time in the sewing room. Sometimes, I think it is best not to know exactly how much time I am spending there or how long it takes to make a specific project, but decided it was worth the experiment for a year. So, here are the stats:

Start date: January 3, 2018
Finish date: January 15, 2018
Finished size: 40 inches x 48 inches
Time invested: 17 hours
Purchases to complete: None. All stash and all supplies were on hand.

The combination of the heart and the purple rows make me think of a heart beat, especially the ones that touch either side of the heart. I'm looking forward to gifting this quilt to a special purple loving mama.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Brighten Up Scrappy Checkerboard Quilt Finish

This is a very special finish. It is the first quilt I will give to my first grandchild. She already has one quilt that I made, but that quilt was made as a general baby quilt before I ever even knew she was on her way. Actually, this quilt is born from the scraps of a quilt I made for my sister-in-law. When I saw I had scraps, lots of scraps in bright girly prints and colors, I just knew I had to turn them into a quilt for Amelia.

The original quilt used a jelly roll of Brighten Up, a fabric collection by Me and My Sister Designs for Moda. The leftovers cut up nicely into 2 1/2 squares. Paired with white squares, this turned out extra bright and fun.

The quilting is a simple cross hatch through all the white squares. It surprised me how quickly this quilted up.

And this is the first quilt I have made with a flannel back. I love love the feel of it. It will be perfect for playing on and snuggling under.

The binding is a solid purple and was completely machine stitched into place.

This quilt finished at about 38 inches by 54 inches.

The butterflies that are the focus for this fabric collection are super sweet.

I also added some complementary solids to the mix of prints. Not to many. Just enough to give your eye a place to stop every now and then.

I can't wait to gift this quilt to the sweetest baby girl I know.

Linking up to Let's Bee Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts.

Quilts Inspired By Art: Hello Baby Week Three

We have a finished quilt! Welcome to the third week of the first project in our Quilts Inspired by Art series. If you are joining us for the first time this week, check out how we got here:

Week One: Introduce the Inspiration Art for the Month and Discuss Fabric Options
Week Two: Cutting and Piecing Instructions for the Quilt Top
Week Three: That's This Week!

This week, we'll be learning how to add lettering to our quilt top along with options for quilting the quilt.

Here is the original greeting card that inspired this quilt. It comes to us from Linda Aarus at Polka Dots and Paper.

This is where we left off last week. Borders have now been added and it is time to add letters. Since this is intended to be a quilt for a baby or young child, I wanted a fitting word. "hugs" seemed like just the right word for this quilt.

ADDING LETTERS

To audition letters, use your computer and any word processing software to try out fonts and sizes. To stay true to our inspiration art, the letters are similar in size. The font is different only because the simpler the font, the easier it is to apply to the quilt. I tend to like simple fonts better anyway.

To make sure the letters line up nicely, mark a straight line for the bottom of the letters to sit on. I used a blue water soluble pen for my line.

Use a fusible product to adhere the letters to the quilt. Keep in mind that the fusible will go on the back of the letters. This means the letters need to be reversed. I turned over my printed pages and outlined the letters with a pen so the reverse letters could be seen good enough to be traced.

The fusible product I am using is Steam A Seam 2 Lite. Since there is paper on both sides, lift up a corner to determine which side has the "glue". The glue side will be rough. Be sure to draw on the paper that has the rough side underneath.

Trace the reversed letters on the fusible paper. Do not cut out the letters yet. Cut around them enough so they will fit on your fabric. Peel the paper (the one without the rough feel) and lay the letters on the WRONG side of the fabric. Wrong is emphasized only because it is a common error to accidentally iron the fusible to the right side of your fabric, which is wrong. Ha. Follow the manufacturers instructions for your product to iron the fusible to the wrong side of your fabric. Now, cut out the letters.

Do one more dry run with your letters to make sure you are happy with the placement.

Carefully peel the paper off the back of each letter and place it on the quilt.

Remember how I used a blue water soluble pen to make a line for my letters? Well, that needs to be removed before any final pressing begins. If you don't, pressing can sometimes make those water soluble lines permanent. I used a spray bottle to wet the area and let it dry. Again, fuse the letters to your quilt according to the instructions with your fusible product.

The fusing is not permanent so the letters need to be secured with stitching before the quilt is washed. There are two primary ways to do this. The first way is to stitch them down before the quilt top is layered and quilted. Many traditional quilts use a blanket stitch for this, but any stitch will work as long as the edges of the letters are stitched to the quilt. The other way is to stitch them down during the quilting, which is what I did for this project.

QUILTING SUGGESTIONS

The quilting options always seem endless. An all over design would be nice on this quilt, either straight line or free motion. I'm going to try that with the second version of this quilt (which you will see shortly), but for this version, it is quilted in zones. That means there is different quilting in each area of the quilt.

For the print and the red fabric that make up the horizontal and vertical stripes in the quilt, I used straight lines a half inch apart in coordinating thread.

The blue background is quilted with large circles except around the word "hugs" where the circles are smaller to form a "cloud" around the word and also to help secure the letters to the quilt. The red border is quilted with straight lines and the outer border alternates between a large circle and straight lines.

The quilting is a little easier to see from the back of the quilt.

The final quilt represents its inspiration art quite nicely. I consider this quilt to be the boy version.

Here is the girl version. The top is complete. This one is going to have "xoxo" instead of a word. The quilting will be an all over free motion flower design. I'm hoping to share it in finished form next week.

In three short weeks, we've made it from idea to finished quilt. Next week will be our final week on this project. We'll take one more look at our quilts as compared to our inspiration art and I'll roll out this project in pattern form. In February, it will be time to take on a new art inspiration piece.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times and Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt. Also linking up with Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story and Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.