Project: "Aunt" Lap Quilt

Penny is a very sweet, giving girl. With no current quilt projects pressing, she picked out 3 quilts from my pinterest board for her two aunts and her grandma (Chris' side). So, after coming back from a long trip I decided to start with the easiest quilt to do. I honestly think picking the fabric was the longest part of this process (besides the actual quilting). Here's what the pinterest quilt looks like:

You just use 42- 10" squares and sew them together and cut in the middle to get half square triangles and sew them together again and cut to make a block. Chain piecing was so great for this.
But before I get too ahead of myself, let me show you the colors I (along with my sister in-law) picked:

I separated them into darks and lights (as suggested by the instructions) and this is what I came up with. Some of these prints I just LOVE so much and was so excited to use. So, first you make combinations of one light square and one dark square and put them right sides together (I did this in an assembly line set up and staged them to get everything done at one point and them move to the next step).

I used a regular pen to do this- You just draw a line from one corner to the next and then sew your 1/4" seam on each side of the line (and chain piecing here was such a time saver as I just punched these things out so fast.

 After both sides are done, you just use a rotary cutter and cut down the middle.

Next, I pressed the seams to the "dark" fabric. Then I got to mix and match the squares with lights and darks on opposite sides (which is so much fun). Then the same thing of drawing a line down the middle and doing seams on either side again:

Then here's the finished product:

The best part was for Penny and I to lay the blocks out together on the floor:

I then chain pieced the block into row and then rows into the quilt top.

Then the next part was to pick a border color. I decided to go with the dark blue:

I cut 5" strips width wide (The pattern says to have 8 but I only used 6).

Finished quilt top!

 Now the fun really started- how to quilt this bad boy. Penny suggested hearts for the border and I was thinking keeping it pretty simple for the quilt top.

Here's how the border turned out:

First I traced the stencil onto parchment paper with a pencil. (I couldn't find my marking pencil or marker to do this or the block quilting design so if you have them, USE THEM!)

Then I pinned it down onto the borders one at a time, making sure that the corners turned at the right point.

Then comes the AMAZING free-motion presser foot (that I got for Christmas!). I also bought quilters gloves that made a HUGE difference when using this presser foot. 

Here we go!

First part of a border done.

One entire row done (quilters gloves in the top right corner).

This is by far my favorite part- The quilting makes perforations in the paper and tearing it away is so much for me (like popping bubble wrap).

So here's the stencil for the blocks.

Laying them out and pinning them down again like the border.

Seeing the quilting from the back.

With the border.

Time to tear!

Back view before binding.

All trimmed up and ready to bind!

With help, I chose this teal color for the binding. I only needed 1/2 a yard and used 2 1/2" strips and did a zig-zag stitch to complete the binding.

All done.

One happy girl to give this bad boy away. Finished dimensions are 68" x 60" (a nice sized lap quilt). I wash it and dry it (I use a color catcher so that colors won't bleed instead of pre-washing my fabric). I hope this finds it's way to happy Aunt from this cute little niece who picked out the design.

Project: Navy Quilt

I have a great friend (maybe I'm biased that I have great friends) and her fiancé is about to leave on deployment into a submarine. With that, there are very specific dimensions for the officers' cots and what kind of fabric can and cannot be used. At first, we were thinking something easy like a fleece blanket with the knots tying them together. Then we found out that we could only use cotton. So, with the dimensions of 30" by 90" (a couple feet longer than the size of the bed so he can have some fold over), we came up with this idea of 3 10"squares by 9 10" squares. The hope for the middle squares was to have the lyrics of a lullaby put on that my friend had written him (so cute, right?). Because there are 3 versus and 3 chorus', there would be 3 extra squares in the middle to do with what we wanted. My mom has some pretty cool stencils for quilting and even though we're far away, I was able to take pictures and ask which she liked best and what not. 

(My daughter looks for photo opportunities, especially when I'm doing a quilt.)

I just chain pieced my way through this quilt top with no problems (after seeing all the practice I got with the Hello Kitty quilt, lining these squares up came with such ease) and ironed the seams the same direction on one row and then the opposite way for the next row. Now, we had originally thought to had embroider the lyrics on but due to some time constraints, I decided to go with iron-ons onto the blocks:

The stencils we decided to go with in the empty squares was a heart and a moon with a star:

After such a detailed stencil, we both agreed that just outlining the rest of the squares (the outer ones) would be best and would keep the eye drawn to the middle. We used a flannel for the back to keep him warm when he goes off to sea.

All folded up and ready to be shipped off. (They got it just after Christmas but in time before he was to leave).

Project: Hello Kitty (for you can guess who)

Penny has been *almost* begging me to make her a Hello Kitty quilt. I gave her some pretty cool options (I thought). Turns out, she does NOT like the pixelated look at all. So, she told me she like this one the best:

(You can check out my pinterest board as it gives specific dimensions and how many squares of each color you'll need). It's like they gave the pattern away.... Anyways, I decided that for the size we want (twin-ish) that I needed the squares to be 3" (that includes the seam allowance) of each color (you're looking at 750 blocks- I must love her). I had her help out in picking the colors (as we didn't use solids because that's not what she wanted and this is HER quilt of course). Here are her finished colors of choice:

She did choose the white and yellow to be solid but the purples will be the background. She LOVES these colors. I'm so grateful for this cool tool that I use the make the 3" strips from the fabric and then to make them the 3" squares that I need them to be:

I must really love her (or quilting/piecing...). 

Once I had all the squares cut out, I looked at the pattern as a grid and stacked the colors in order for each row. 

 And then came the chain piecing (which saves SO much thread *in my opinion*). I chain pieced them one row at a time. The real upside to this pattern is that most of the Hello Kitty design is symmetrical (except for her bow on the right side). I then pressed seams to one side and then the opposite way for the next row so that as I sew the rows together, the seams will match up better.

Then came the fun part- lining up all those squares.... (but the upside is that Hello Kitty was symmetrical except for her bow on the side).

This was one happy girl. Just after this shot, the power went out for 3 hours... That drove me NUTS. I was on such a good roll. Once the power was back on, I wanted to finish so badly that I made a mistake (pointed out by my husband and to show you that I am NOT a perfect quilter/piecer). He did say wouldn't I rather have him point it out now before I put the batting and backing on...

 

Can you see it? I about DIED when I finally saw it:

 

The black is supposed to be UNDER the bow. Thankfully, it was a quick (ish) fix of just taking out those two block (I took them out as a rectangle and just flipped them) and sewed them back into the quilt. Doesn't this look so much better?:

OCD averted (almost...)! Then I finished up the quilt top:

I found one more mistake.... You see the block that is the same by her ear and bow and then the light square at the bottom that I thought I needed to have there.... Switch!

Man, I almost missed that! 

All better!

Now that's all fixed, I decided that in the background color (the purple) that I would do a continuous butterfly stencil that Penny had picked out. My mom and I also picked a large clamshell stencil for the fur and a freehand flower to go on the jumper. Penny then picked out some greens as the binding.

Front view quilted.

Back view quilted.

The jumper.

The border.

The face.

Binded and washed.

Back view.

One Happy Girl!

This was a joy to work on with my mom. She's given me some great tips and tricks and a new quilting presser foot for Christmas. I know I will make good use of it.