Patchworking It

Two of my good friends from college got married and subsequently got pregnant, wooohooo! HOWEVER, they were essentially a quilters least favorite pregnant couple ever because they decided to wait until the baby was born to learn the sex of said baby. 

I can only channel my inner Stephanie Tanner ... "How rude!" 


It wasn't long after the birth when the couple announced the arrival of their little baby girl. 

It was almost instantaneously that I started pulling out some fabrics from the stash to whip up a little bitty baby quilt. I cut these sumptuous Anna Maria Horner flannels from her Folksy Flannels collection into 6 inch squares and played around with a layout or two.

 

Once I laid them all out, I realized the resulting quilt was way too small. So I grabbed some plum colored linen and cut as many 6 inch squares as I could to make a checkerboard pattern and I really loved the result. Adding the the darker plum fabric really made the other prints POP!

I wasn't sure exactly how to quilt this little baby quilt. I am a little over straight-lines for right now, and I also wanted a quilting pattern that would keep the quilt soft, and not super stiff like straight line quilting or full-on stippling would do.

Sooo, I tried out this little loopi-loop (very technical term). After a few practice rounds on some scrap fabric, I ended up quilting the quilt and really loving the outcome. 
 

I backed and bound the quilt in that same plum colored linen fabric that I used for the patchwork squares. I had some leftover from previous projects that I wanted to use up, and I really just LOVE the way it makes those super colorful Anna Maria Horner prints POP! I also really like the weight and durability it gives to this baby quilt that will get a ton of use (hopefully)!

Quilt Stats: 
- The finished quilt measures ~25x30 inches and is the perfect size for a stroller quilt
- The prints are Anna Maria Horner flannels from her Folksy Flannels collection
- The solid is a Plum 100% Linen from Joann's (sorry)
- The quilt is backed and bound in the plum linen as well
- I bound the quilt with machine

Also, this is another item off of My Bucket List. I really wanted to work make a patchwork quilt, and this is my first patchwork squares quilt! See My Finished Projects as well as My Flickr page for other projects. 


HOLLER!

{Christmas Crafting} "Squares on Point Quilt" for Baby

The final gift to round out all of my coworker gifts this year is a baby quilt for one of the partner's in our firm, who had his first baby last May. 

I wanted to make an easy quilt with a simple pattern, but lots of color and a big impact. I also wanted to us up some Anna Maria Horner flannels and some great Linens that I got at a local estate sale. I decided to use my Squares on Point quilt pattern that I developed for a class last month. 

This quilt kind of came together as I went, and I actually ended up using 3 different linens. A nice grey linen for the quilt top, a nice dark navy linen for the backing, and then for a great punch of color I used my new favorite color on Earth, for the binding.

I just love this fabric. It is soooo nice to work with!! Seriously, go buy some Anna Maria Horner Folksy Flannels.
 

 

I actually worked on this entire quilt while I was teaching the class for the quilt. Given that I could only pay limited attention, I opted for super simple quilt lines. 

I don't think that I have ever been more proud of my binding job either, this quilt was ALMOST perfect!! Seriously, I actually did a really good job. I'm not boasting, I'm just happy that I finally have the hang of it.
 

For the backing, I used a dark navy linen. I wanted something super durable because this will likely be tossed on the floor and crawled all over. 

 

 Some more glamor shots for you!

I hope you enjoy!!

HOLLER!

Remember this quilt?

Ok. So do you remember this quilt that I started a while back? Well, I jumped right back into quilting this baby once I learned of this contest that the Modern Quilt Guild is throwing (having? hosting? launching?). 

The general gist of the rules:

1) A quilt design completely made by you (can be inspired by other things though)

2) Has to be quilted 100% by you (no sending it out to get quilted)

There will be 3 winners. Each winner gets quite a few different prize packages. Kona Cotton Fabrics. Aurifil thread. Entry into a drawing for a new Janome quilting machine. Lots of goodies.

I am not sure that I can be classified as a modern quilter or not. I am not sure what a modern quilter really is. I mean, quilting is like ancient right? My quilt pattern is essentially one big log cabin block, which is pretty much as traditional as it gets.

Anyway, I finished the quilt top back in May. Time for the backing. When I decided to enter it into a contest, I knew that I had to give the backing more thought. I bought a few yards of the print below. It is in the front of the quilt as well. It is from Anna Maria Horner's Garden Party collection (where most of the fabric comes from for this quilt). 

I also got to use my pinking rotary cutter. Well, my rotary cutter with the pinking blade. For some reason, I always thought that by using the pinking blade I would mess up my seam allowance somehow. But it doesn't. 

I hope that its not too hard to picture, but this is what I envision for the quilt back. So each of the yellow AMH print strips will be 10.5 inches wide x the length of the quilt (75 inches). The combination of all the colored strips sandwiched in between are 6.25 inches. Given that, the combo below will be repeated 4 times. I think it will look really good! 

Of course, that meant I had to cut 1.25 inch strips .... weeeee! that was fun! (not).

What do you think?? Can you envision? Do you think that the back flatters the quilt top?

Ok. Back to quilting. I have about 15 days to get this baby done. 

Any quilting suggestions? Any and all are appreciated. 

Holler.