A Finish and Fun!

Finally!  Have you ever had one of those "holy moly" moments when you realized that a gift quilt is going to be needed sooner than you expected?

Meet the quilt top for Baby C who is coming in August.  I'm not sure why I hadn't focused on the fact that August is around the corner and I will need a gift in July.  Seriously....it comes at the same time every year.  I had my "holy moly" moment two weeks ago and started looking for fabric that would work with this pattern.

Luckily, I remembered I had been hoarding this Moda Three Sisters  fabric for a baby quilt and had more than enough to make a quilt for Baby C.  And, there was diversity in patterns -- different scaled florals, fabrics that read as solids, stripes, polka dots, paisley.  All in all, I decided it should work.  These fabrics were those that I bought in an absolute panic to make a quilt for a young woman who was diagnosed with bone cancer while in medical school.  She was in the same high school class as my son, we were in Chicago and feeling very far away, and I knew I had to do something.  So -- I wanted to make a quilt that was peaceful.  This fabric fit the bill!  I was very busy at work and impulsively ordered a 50 fat quarter pack so that I didn't have to spend time searching!  I have also used this fabric for my Oak Park Beauty.  And I had some left over which was sequestered for another project.

So, Baby C will have a lovely feminine baby quilt and I'll continue to look for the right nursery fabrics for a later quilt.

This pattern is from Cozy Modern Quilts by Kim Schaeffer and is not the first baby quilt I've made from her book.  As you can see from this post, I made two at once by resizing the block and improving (I think) the construction process.  The Mahalo quilt was also made from this pattern. So, it's tried and true and fast!

Making this quilt top should have taken less than a week but it ended up taking a bit more than two weeks.  But I have a very good excuse!  One of the kind and generous quilters from our little church group loaned me her Accu-Cut Studio cutter.  Oh, how fun!  And efficient! This shelf of men's shirts was attacked in full force.  The smaller cuts that you see here are sleeves and they are awkward to cut with a rotary cutter.  With the 2.5" die in place, they all were cut and scraps thrown in the scrap bag!  Great improvement in the shelf.

And for good measure, I cut a bunch of fabric that I had bought for baby charity quilts and finally had to force myself to stop cutting.  Otherwise, I was going to start pulling fabric "willy nilly" from the shelves to cut with no idea what the final purpose was.  I managed to cut 10.5" stack of 2.5" strips and came to be a believer in the Studio!  For those of you who have them, kudos to you!

I have to say, I'm feeling pretty productive and I have a lot of blocks leftover and believe I can make a quilt for a friend's daughter that will "fit the bill" as well.

I hope you have had a creative week -- productive or not.  

Jan

Eat, Quilt, and Be Merry!

I can't wait.  This time next week I will be knee deep in quilting some tops that are way overdue for attention.  I'm heading back to Chicago on Monday to enjoy the generosity of my friend, MacQuilt, and spend a few days playing with Sadie, her Gammill.

I currently have seven tops (actually I have more than that but let's be realistic -- how much can I really get done) that are stacked with batting and backing and waiting to be pushed in the car bright and early on Monday.  With a little luck, I'll get six of them quilted and one will stay in Chicago for Mom22smartchix to quilt for me.  It needs a bit more than I can give it.

In addition, I will be meeting up with friends to catch up (one of whom I haven't seen since I retired in early Sept).  I needed more social time but I am keenly aware of the fish analogy about company and the G8 Summit coming to Chicago at the end of my visit seems like a good time to head home with tops to bind. Hopefully, lots of tops to bind.

Going with me are:

 Orca Bay -- which is heavy and I'll be glad to get turned into a quilt and off the floor.

Paperweight -- which will have a few challenges -- not the least of which is almost every seam is bias to bias and no border to control it.

 

Oak Park Beauty -- which is done in very non-traditional NY Beauty colors.  They are normally lots of mediums and darks or more recently, incredible brights and batiks.  Not this one.  It's a Moda top all the way and mostly from the same line.  I love it.  The feel is very different.  The plan with the huge borders is to end up with scallops.  We'll see.  This is the one that I'd like some custom quilting on and it will be staying for a longer visit.  Otherwise, it's all over pattern by me. The teal strip you see is a flange which complicates all over quilting as you can't (shouldn't) quilt over it.  Not my problem!  Ha!

Dollies are done and ready to be quilted.  I fell in love with this border fabric and went back and bought the rest of the bolt at $3.50 a yard (Benartex).  It will make a great backing or go in a quilt (or two).  It goes with almost everything.  We'll see how it quilts up.

The easiest/fastest baby quilt in the world got done this weekend and I'm hoping to get some stippling done on it and have it ready soon.  Baby JM is here so it's time.  I have enough fabric left over to do a duplicate for a soon-to-be-baby in Montana and that one will have to be quilted on my Bernina.  I could get the second one done before I go and I have the backing -- just not sure if I have the mojo.

There are two more quilts going (Village and Waffle) which I haven't posted about.  We'll see how they look when the quilting is done.

Wish me luck (I'll be taking lots of Diet Coke and Advil to supplement my activities!).  I hope you're finding time to finish a few things along the way!  Jan