I was really hoping that by the time I wrote this post, I could take a picture of a tiny baby on this quilt. Sadly, tiny baby is staying comfortable and still cooking. But his quilt is finished, whenever he makes his appearance!
The back is four fat quarters of Tula Pink’s Prince Charming I’ve had in my stash for an age, paired with a teal honeycomb print from my LYS.
Finishing this was my September Lovely Year of Finishes goal!
I’m quilting along on Squares Plus. I’m using a rounded squares pattern like this one on Mystery Bay Quilt Design (scroll down) and while I’ve never used this design to fill an entire quilt, I think it’s going well.
Except for the many skipped stitches. I’ve cleaned and oiled my sweet Juki, changed the needle, adjusted the settings, rethreaded, and the only thing I haven’t done is switched to a new spool of thread. I’m working with a brand new spool of Aurifil, and I’d really hate to think it was bad thread, but I’m running out of ideas. Any thoughts why this is happening? Can bulky seams sometimes cause skipped stitches?
In any case, skipped stitches or no, I’m hoping to finish this up by the end of September (because let’s face it, with other life changes happening around there, it won’t get done period if I don’t finish before then). For a little added incentive, I’m linking up with A Lovely Year of Finishes at Sew Bittersweet Designs.
And oh hey, it’s WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!
WIP Wednesday, it has been a long time. It’s nice to see you again! I’ve been working this week on a quilt for my son – with his arrival within the next month or so, I’d like to finish this sooner rather than later! I have a coworker that thinks the minute I complete the final stitch will the the minute I go into labor – it’s a nice idea, I gotta say.
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.jsThe pattern is Squares Plus from McCall’s Quick Quilts Feb/Mar 2015, which I found originally on Pinterest. It calls for F8ths, which made for easy cutting. I’m also decreasing the size of the top from 5×6 big square units to 4×5. The finished top is somewhere in the vicinity of 55″x67″ 
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The fabric is Lizzy House’s Natural History line, which I love. My husband and I are both science people – he has a geode/rock collection, I studied environmental biology – so this fabric line seems perfect for us.
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(Why yes, that is an Aquaman print by Jonathan Reincke we’re going to hang in our kid’s room!)
Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!
It’s really nice when you finish a project and it turns out exactly how you wanted it to be, isn’t it? My Meadow quilt has been a back burner project for me for a while (since last September, in fact!). I had a plan for the rainbow section since taking the class with the lovely Lizzy House at Gather Here, but I had to have a think about the background and flower centers.
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I’m glad to say that the grey background and slate blue flower centers really makes the rainbow pop. I also added extra border fabric than what the pattern calls for to make this queen-sized (86″ x 93″). It’s perfect. Because we both are huge, I decided to send it out for longarm quilting to Mary Gregory at See Mary Quilt. She did such a wonderful job – each component is individually quilted and the flowers have individual designs.
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I just really love it and can’t wait for the weather to cool enough to put it on our bed!
A while ago, a good friend from college told me her sister was pregnant with a little boy and asked if I’d make a quilt. She had no particular feelings about pattern or color (other than the room would have a lot of navy), so I had a lot of freedom in design and fabric.
I settled on the Color + Print plus quilt pattern from Issue 17 of Love Patchwork and Quilting. All the fabric came from my stash and it was a lot of fun to use some bits that have been lingering for a while. I only bought the grey background print – even backing (the classic Ikea numbers print) came from the stash!
The recipient arrived two weeks ago and I got to meet him a few days ago. He’s tiny and dark-haired and snoozed comfortably in my arms for a while. It was a little like looking into the future – I’m expecting our kid to be tiny and dark-haired when he arrives this fall.
This spring, I participated in my first Instagram mini swap. I’d seen these but none of them really called to me until the Lizzy House Mini Quilt Swap (#lizzyhouseminiquiltswap), hosted by Joanna (IG: riddlingwhimsy) and Sarah (IG: smilestooloudly). You know I’m a big Lizzy House fan; my very first quilt was made from her Outfoxed line and I’ve been following her designs ever since.
Here’s the finished top:
That’s 42 3.5″ triangles; some of them fussy cut. I think most of her collections are represented (except for Lizzy Dish and Natural History). The grey is leftover AGF Pure Elements.
It’s quilted with straight lines 1/4″ from each seam. (I know, the lighting is a little weird here – it was getting dark outside when I took this).
The backing is Cat Dreams from Catnap; my swap partner said she really liked the kitties. I was a leeeetle sad to send this one away; my husband told me that it was one of his favorite things I’ve ever made. But I have plenty of scraps and can easily make another one. And then I received the mini that made for me and seriously: how gorgeous is it?
Thanks Sarah and Joanna for a great swap!
You guys, this second trimester stuff is great. The nausea is gone, I’m able to stay awake past Jeopardy, people give me seats on the train, and I barely dry heave at all! And best of all, the making-stuff mojo is in full swing, in order to finish a great pile of stuff before my life is turned upside down by the arrival of a small, tremendously dependent human. All that means that I have a lot of stuff nearing completion that I get to show off.
But first, the chuppah was a success! It did its chuppah thing during the ceremony and didn’t rip or blow away (my two biggest fears).
You can’t really see the top in that shot, but you can see that it worked as required.
I also finished my Meadow top. It’s gorgeous and I love it and it is huge and wonderful and I can’t help gushing about it. And did I mention it is huge? The top is approx. 86″ x 93″ (without quilting), which is a good size for our bed. I still love having the Neptune sampler on the bed, but it’s pretty much exactly the same size as the mattress. I’m a serial blanket stealer, so it invariably ends up on my side. I think a larger quilt will solve that problem.
As this one is huge, I’m planning on sending out to be longarmed as soon as I sew up the back.
I’m really thankful for this little window of maker mojo and I’m trying to make the most of it – I’ve finished a mini, have a baby quilt for a friend ready for binding, and have knit nearly 2 baby sweaters in the last few weeks. In addition, I’d like to make a quilt for the little guy before he comes.
Boom. Chuppah done. I finished it over the weekend and the brides think it’s great. (I think it’s great too.) I actually went with a more streamlined version of my original plan, which was to quilt through the middle, but I think that step is unnecessary, and will make turning it into a quilt more difficult. The HST blockss shed a lot of loose threads putting the top together, so I’d like to try not to manipulate this top very much until it can be sandwiched and quilted as a quilt.
The chuppah has loops at each corner for attachment to the chuppah poles during the ceremony; I sewed them firmly but you never know. It seemed to do OK hanging on the fence like this, but I’m not sure what will happen if there’s a stiff breeze on the day. I’m sure it will be fine!
I don’t think I’ll use the technique of chain piecing the rows together and leaving them connected as the quilt grows and then sew the whole thing together. It made ironing and sewing the rows together very fiddly, and I still had to trim the threads in order to iron open the seams. So – a good experiment, and I’m glad I tried the technique, but going forward, I’ll put tops together my usual way.
In other news, my Rainbow Meadow is coming out of hibernation. All the pieces are cut and organized and ready to sew and now I’m sewing. The blocks are a bit fiddly, what with the curves and ironing them a certain way, but the end result is making me very, very happy.
Linking from Instagram because I’m lazy.
Oh and hey! It is Wednesday, so I’m linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!
It’s been all HSTs for the chuppah all the time around here. It’s been slow going with the trimming but finally I finished yesterday. Tonight, I’m going to start sewing the top (and perhaps try to chain piece the entire top similar to this method illustrated by Stitches in Play).
Backing fabric for the chuppah is ordered and ready to go and the wedding is less than two months away. I think all my ducks are in a row!
I also started work on a new, exhausting WIP a couple of months ago. Here’s a progress pic after 12 weeks of work:
I’m hoping to be done around the end of September. Expect an uptick in tiny knit sweaters in the coming months!
Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!
Well, hello there, unintentional month-and-a-half blogging hiatus. February was rough, yo. I think I was sick for the last month and a half, which isn’t pleasant in the best of weather. But here north of Boston, we have many feet of snow, which has pulverized our public transportation system (aka how I get to work every day). Not feeling well + commuting for several hours a day on crowded trains with cranky fellow commuters has left me very tired at the end of the day, so much so that crafting hasn’t been my number one priority.
To be completely honest, most nights I watch Jeopardy and then go to bed.
I did spin a little, turning this delicious Malabrigo Nube braid into 324 sproingy yards of delicious sport-weight yarn.
The braid itself wasn’t the easiest spin. The fibers seemed very compacted, so it was difficult to pull apart and each piece needed to be fluffed a bit before spinning. I was going for a slightly thicker spin (than my usual super thin) and I’m very happy with the finished product.
But! It is now March! We’ve gotten through yet another February and Spring, the most wonderful season, approaches! Already the light is returning and days are noticeably longer. Now for temperatures to rise above freezing and the snow to melt (also, for the storm scheduled to dump more snow on us tonight to not dump as much snow as predicted).
And it being March means that the wedding of my dear friend S is a little over two months away, so I better bust a move on the HST Chuppah. Today, I sewed all the HSTs and started trimming.
I’d really like to finish this top by the end of the month, so for a bit of motivation, I’m making this my March ALOYF goal.
Lucymade 