Project: Baby Boy Quilt, Blast From the Past

Remember this quilt? From way back in August? 

It's back.... Time to mini-me it up for a cool friend having a baby boy.

Here is the color pallet she chose (beautiful, right?). 

This is the first time I've worked with this many solids.

I had to measure multiple times to get everything lined up well but it was worth it (using scrapes to try and try again). Here they are, ready to be sewn together:

Chain piece sewing was my best friend in this whole experience. First, you take the small squares and sew a small white piece in between and then add the sashing in the middle to make that piece of the block. 

Then you sew a sashing piece to the medium block, 

and then a long sashing piece to the biggest block piece.

Then comes the layout. I kind of just picked at random. You can see the sashing in between each "block" not in yet but I spaced them out so I could visualize them.

I then sewed the blocks together into rows. 

And then the rows together into a quilt top.

And then finally the last outside border. Now, usually, you press as you go but I was trying to pound this quilt out fast so I just laid the seams to the dark side (because you really don't want to see them under the white). Then, I pressed them all out before I added the outside border.

Here are the auditions for the backing fabric.

And here is what I ended up with:

Next, it was time to baste this bad boy up:

I had a little bit of a hard time decided if I should do an all over pattern on this quilt OR if I should just do a simple design and just outline the squares/blocks. Finally decided on just outlining each square/rectangle. I think it went pretty well:

(*Before the wash, front view)

(*Before the wash, back view):

Front view (washed):

Back view (washed):

Best photo op ever:

Love it!!!

Finished size is ~ 32"x 42". 

It's amazing what you can do when you have your mind set to do it. Believe it or not, but I had only some pieces cut on a Thursday, finished cutting and started piecing on Friday (night), and laid it out and sewed the whole thing plus quilting and binding it on Saturday... Amazing, I think. 

This is a lovely quilt. 

I was sad not to be able to go to her baby shower but 

I wanted to give this to her before I went on holiday.

She LOVED IT :)

Project: K's Baby Boy Quilt

I have had the chance to get to know an amazing woman who is about to embark into motherhood for the first time. It's fun to see how a first time parent acts (mostly because I've forgotten what it was like). She is blessed to be having a baby boy towards the end of June. There was no way I could let this chance pass by to make another quilt. This mom-to-be has gone to the fabric store with me before (so I could help her get fabric for a rag quilt) and she said herself that she's a little indecisive when it comes to fabrics and things like that (which is perfectly fine- I have my days too where I don't know what I want to do or what fabrics to pick). I was fortunate to come across this beautiful charm pack on the Missouri Star Quilt Company's daily deal and I couldn't pass it up (they were practically giving it away… What was I to do?). Here's the pallet:

How beautiful is this? She described her color pallet of choice would be warm pastels. I thought this fit the bill quite nicely. Then, it was on to choosing a pattern to make these into. She narrowed it down to three for me to pick from and so I ended up picking this one:

Try to look past the cute little baby on this quilt..

I sketched this out (not knowing what size the finished blocks would be off the top of my head). It ended up being 5 blocks by 5 blocks. Using the 5" squares from the charm pack, you need 3 squares of each color for one block and 25 5"squares to become the half square triangles. In the end, the half square triangles became 4.5" blocks. I trimmed up the 2 5" squares of each color to 4.5" to line up with the finished half square triangle blocks.

But first, the half square triangles: I drew a line down the center of one block and then you sew 1/4" on each side of the center line and then cut on the line to make 2 half square triangles from one block. 

I then sewed the 4.5" square next to it. It really helps to lay out the block to make sure you're sewing the correct sides together. I then put the whole block together, which is basically a four patch, with two of the squares being half square triangles. Once the block were made, I had the joy of laying out all the blocks to figure out how they should go. I decided on dark (brown) and then light (blue/green) and switch line a checkered pattern. It took me quite a while to make sure there weren't too many florals in a row. This is what we finally came up with (between Penny, Chris, and a couple friends):

I then sewed the blocks into rows and then the rows together (putting the first two rows together then the third and fourth together, sewing those two together and then the fifth row at the end *I hope that made sense*).

Here it is all completed. 

* Small note of making sure you are pressing your 

seams to one side so they come together beautifully.*

I ended up picking this for the backing (sorry the lighting is off):

All basted together:

I chose quilting around the inside outline of the dark colors and then adding in a special. I was thinking, what could I possible add in the middle of these blocks because it seems like some wasted space:

My creative juices started to flow and I had narrowed it down to teddy bears/stars/duckies or cars/planes/trucks. I asked a mutual friend which she thought (so I could make this a surprise) and she picked the cars/trucks/planes. As I was thinking of these "stencil ideas" and googling all I could for images, it occurred to me that I had bought a 100+ cookie cutter set (that some of the cutters are MASSIVE) and found these:

It worked out that there were 5 for the "trucks, cars, plane" cookie cutters so I laid them out and started marking up the quilt:

It went fairly quick to trace them on. Then, the fun began- the quilting!! Here's a view of just one of the squared fully done: (it's a train)

After all the quilting was done, the harder part started- picking a binding fabric. It's fun to pick the fabrics, don't get me wrong but I usually need some input. I already knew I wanted to do a darker kind of fabric for the binding so here were my choices:

I ended up going with the middle greenish one.

Binding before Chris got home from work:

All done and washed (front view):

Back view (again, bad lighting):

Up close back:

 Close up front view:

In the box, ready to go:

The final dimensions ended up being ~ 40"x 40".  Ironically, she won't be getting this quilt until her baby shower BUT she's not on Facebook so I can show off the finished work without ruining her surprise! And on to the next one...

Project: Rainbow Quilt

I got a request to make an amazing hexagon quilt, but sadly my skill set is not quite to that level yet. Then, this rainbow chevron quilt was highly favored because it is reminiscent of Rainbow Bright (Anyone else remember that character?).

I had this charm pack laying around from Missouri Star Quilt Company and I thought this would be a perfect fit! *The paisley print was taken out per her request.*

Plus, I decided that there weren't enough colors to represent the rainbow, so I took from my stash to get the final colors:

And here's the sketch:

(Although, I did change which color would be in which row...)

I did this the same way as the herringbone with the 5" squares and turning them into half square triangles:

Draw a line down the middle (diagonally) and then sew 1/4" seam on each side of the line.

You press the seam towards the dark color. Next, I started laying each color out into a chevron pattern to see which prints should be mixed and matched:

Then I sewed them into each row and pressed to one side and then the next towards the other side so that when I put two rows together, you can just line up the opposing seams so they fit perfectly together. 

(The only thing that is a little more difficult for the chevron as opposed to the herringbone is that you have to do your best to line up the points because you don't have the fabric seams opposing each other but no big deal).

And here I sewed each color strip together (2 rows together):

I then pressed each color row and laid them out on the floor to figure out what color order I wanted them in (Actually, I had Penny figure it out for me ;) ). 

*One day I will have a design board to pin them up instead of using the floor.*

Next, I sewed pink and green together, aqua and blue together and left purple hanging. I then put the pink/green and aqua/blue together and then added the purple. I had the recipient pick what kind of quilting she wanted on the quilt- she picked this butterfly stippling pattern.

Pretty fun, I think :) So, then it was on to the backing. I showed her my whole collection to choose from and she really liked these fat quarters. I needed 6 fat quarters total (although, it would be two across and 2.5 down). First, I went ahead and squared the fat quarters to make them true fat quarters (18"x21") before sewing them together. 

*These are folded in half long ways and half width ways*.

 I then sewed one yellow to one orange and then the three sections together (making it yellow-orange, orange-yellow, yellow-orange). I had the seams pressed to the orange side so they would fit together nicely when I was sewing the three rows together but then pressed the middle seams open.

Then, I took about 5 1/2" off the top row and bottom row of the backing to make it even and so that the middle section would be centered. I then basted all three layers together (backing, batting, quilt top) and started stenciling.

All done stenciling and ready for quilting!

Just a beautiful distraction of a rainbow from a Tuesday early evening.

Back to the quilt....

All quilted (if you're able to zoom in):

And on to the binding!

All bound and ready for the washer/drier!

I was (again) surprised at how ALL the crayola washable

 marker came out with no bleeding or anything.

(No more marker :) )

Back view:

Again, another enjoyable quilt-making day for a great mission friend.