Baby Quilts

I finally got the baby quilts for the twins done.  They are intended to be functional quilts that used up bits and pieces of the stash, not great masterpieces.  I was trying to finish them Thursday night, but a storm took out our power for most of the evening.   Friday night, I started cutting out 2" bias strips from a batik fabric that used to be curtains in my girl's room.  I was debating if it was worth the extra time to make bias instead of straight strips, but decided that for a baby quilt that would likely be washed often, the bias was worth the effort.  But that made me think I should round the corners as justification for having a bias edge.

I may never do mitered corners ever again.  I am predicting that rounded corners are going to be my signature style.

Not only does it look cool, but it was fast and easy.

I did trim 1/8" off the corner after the binding was attached to the back side to make the corner transition smoother.

I had planned to help my daughter sew some clothes this weekend, but she stayed up all night gaming.  So while she was sleeping, I not only finished the baby quilts, I made this pair of bags to deliver them in.

I think I may have won the skull and roses fabric in the same blog give away as the Day of the Dead fabric that became the Oingo Boingo Bowling Shirt.

Just a basic shopping bag.  Each bag used 1/2 yard of fabric.  1.5" hem across the upper edge.  French seams for both strength and a nice finish.  I did top stitch the seams as well for reinforcement.  Box pleat on the bottom to create a 4" bottom and sides.

Fussy cut the white skull fabric 3.5" wide with skulls centered (1/4" seam).  Made a tube and seam is centered down the back of the strip.  Had to cut each strip in half an re-orient so the skulls were always upright.  Pressed and top-stitched before I attached.  20" of strap above the edge.  3" from side-seam.

Well, I'm off to try to sew clothes with the daughter.  And a reminder to those of you making comments... about 1/2 of you are showing up as "no-reply" bloggers.  If you have left a comment on one of my blog posts and didn't get an email reply, you probably need to fix your settings.  I suspect this is a "Blogger Thing" as it has happened with people with whom I've always been able to reply and many new followers (Stephanie, I mean you.)

Oh!!! I found the Love Entwined Applique.  I had foolishly "put it away" into an old suitcase that I sometimes use for projects.  It was hidden under a pile of fabric waiting to become clothing.

Remember me?

Most activities...including quilting, are very seasonal, at least for me.  This is biker season.  Instead of quilting, I've put about 1500 miles on the motorcycle, about 120 miles at a time, over the past month and a half.  The only pics I have of those events are several weekend where I took to placing self-adhesive googly eyes on biker tats.

I have to save some for their blackmail potential.  In case DH or I come up missing, you have permission to release these to the police.

In mid-June I decided to get serious about physical activity.  I started by building 10-30 minutes into my insane work day to take a walk.  When I wasn't able to meet my 150 min/ week goal I did some serious (crazy) re-vamp of my schedule and doubled the goal to 300 min/week.  Is anyone surprised that I actually did better when the bar was raised?  For the record, I have not lost an ounce (literally) but I have walked my ass into shape (literally) and have firmed up the jiggly bits all over.   These shoes were my reward.

I have been plugging away at the hand piecing of the USA quilt.  All the diagonal strips have been combined and now just need to add the end triangles and sashing strips.  I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on this project!

An in the category of "what the $%*^"....I have lost this project.  I've been working on the Esther Aliu applique.  I was finished with the center and remember taking this on the Grangeville/Salmon ride, but was too tired on the ride to work on it.  I remember prepping strips for the outer border after I got home.

I can't find it.  Anywhere.

It is probably lost in my house.

Poo.

I think I will forget about that and work on my self portrait applique for a Christmas gift for my DH.

As I create that pattern, I need to detail the right mirror, improve the boot...and figure out how to represent my real curls.  Shouldn't be hard as I crank this up to "larger than life" size.... Right?

Karma

I spent many hours this weekend hand piecing rows 4 & 5  of my USA quilt together.  This distant, but blurry pic reinforced that I made the right decision by adding 2.5 inch sashing strips (2" finished) around each block .  The extra inch really adds some breathing space.

This is about 1/2 way.  And yes, I am "totally over" the need to completely hand stitch anything.

But the real purpose of my post is to talk about the "leftovers".  Tonight I spend my second "round" of adding strips to the mini blocks I started on the retreat to build some large, lovely red blocks.

Why"

All my friends who sent red fabric sent WAY more than I neeeded.  I have enough for the USA quilt,

Plus a bonus half square triangle quilt (also hand pieced).

But those extra reds are going to be a Karma Quilt Give Away!!! If you sent me fabric you already bought a ticket to win a red & white quilt  (...ok, maybe just a flimsy...I may be getting unrealistic).

Here's the deal.  Everyone who sent fabric is automatically entered.  But I know I'ts been a crazy long time since I started.  And then there's the whole Google Blogger Bye Bye thing.  So to figure out whom I may be easily able to hunt down, I'm offering a BONUS CHANCE.  Everyone who sent red fabric and replies to this post with any comment that suggests that you are still alive, gets a bonus chance.  How easy is that?   Hope to hear from you soon.  And just for fun, include the state you sent fabric from in your post.  

Baby Quilt 1 Done

Long term blog followers might recognize this tidbit of piecing.  About 3 years ago, I received a packet of precut triangles from a shop hop at Halfway, Oregon.  One day, when I was killing time, I started piecing them together, and adding bits and pieces to make this quilt.  It was my very first foray into true improv piecing.  Meanwhile, I've been trying to improve my FMQ skills and periodically would pull this quilt out to try  a design I saw on a blog.

 I just went back through my blog and discovered that I pieced this the summer of 2011.  I posted about it here and here.  As I re-read the old blogs, the irony is that I think I was about to go out to dinner with our friends Kas & Dave the day I was "killing time".   They are now pregnant.  With twins.   About a week ago I found out that they were having girls.  The next day we received the invite to the baby shower.  That's really not fair.  The babies won't be ready for another 7 weeks.  I spent most of Saturday quilting like a fiend, but still didn't finish.  I took the partially finished quilt and the flimsy, but took them back to finish.

  

Which I did this afternoon.  And because quilters are really far more interested in the back than the front...here you go.  The initials in the end panel are the parents and the girl's initials.

Other baby will get this quilt.  Which has an even more interesting connection.  It was also made from Shop Hop Charm Squares.  From the same shop in Halfway, but 2 years later.  Oh, and the reason that I had enough door prizes to make a quilt is because it was from the trip when I took my biker buddies with me. And the babies daddy is a biker.  Well, at least he was before twins.

And I might have finished at least one of them if I hadn't stopped to crochet a couple boobie beanies.  After all Daddy needs something to look at while the babies are eating.

Color Blind?

Quilting initials into a panel of a baby quilt.  Can't stop thinking that this looks just like the pictures they eye doc uses to assess color blindness.  If you are color blind and can't figure out what I'm talking about...I'm probably right.

Next step?  Martini glass marking.

LE Center

It took me most of my day off (maybe 9 hours) to prep and stitch down all these points.    I was going to do a darker blue, but I found lots of these teal scraps left over from the double wedding ring quilt that I could work in here.

In retrospect, I should have sewn the circle down first, but I thought it was going to be a little too big and thought it would be easier to stitch the circle ring smaller than it would be to resize or adjust the points to match.

Now I wish that I would have used the darker blues that I started with for the outside zig-zag border.  Oh well.

As I was stitching, I spent a lot of time thinking about this pattern.  Although I appreciate all the tiny little details, I like more white space in my quilts.  I'm going to skip the round flowers and even the 6 petaled ones that surround the star.  I'm really looking forward to the corner vases and I think they will stand out more without the extras.   To further annoy the purists, I also plan on making the  next several borders larger, spreading the designs out  for white space, and to make up for the fact that I'm not crazy about the bow/swag outer border.  Those corner designs that look like willows / amaranth / sad corn....will likely be replaced by dragonflies.   At least that's my plan as of today.

Change Tack

The great thing about starting a new project is the opportunity to approach a problem from multiple directions.

Strangely, I abandoned my favorite method of applique for the center in favor of a foundation pieced star thinking that it would, in the long run, be simpler and faster.  As part 2 came out, my approach was to fall back on fast and easy back basting applique.  I had considered piecing, but once I saw the smaller scale of this piece, that seemed like it would add a lot of seams and make the whole thing seem much heavier than necessary.  Not to mention increase the odds of lots and lots of unmatched points.

Last night I started the zig border using my usual technique.  Though not bad, I came to realize a couple things.  1)  I NEVER applique things with straight edges. I guess I never saw an advantage of using a technique that is so splendid for something curved somewhere where a 3 second pieced seam would do.  2) Starting with a straight piece of fabric would probably increase the odds of having a straight edged applique.  Seems obvious, but it took several pieces for me to make this discovery on my own.

Tonight I made several slices of my zig-zag border fabric 1" wide, from the 2.5" wide strips I'd been using last night.  Maybe I'll get lucky and my parallellagrams will actually have parallel edges.   A girl can dream.