Photo Dump

It's been a while. But I have still been sewing. So here are a whole bunch of pictures of a whole bunch of quilts I've made recently. Lots of baby quilts!

 This is a simple stripe quilt. I started with the backing fabric (the navy blue floral from Vintage Picnic by Bonnie and Camille) and decided to just match the colours. Which is always difficult on screens rather than in person. I should just get some colour cards but I haven't so I just try my best. I ended up ordered 4 "co-ordinating" Bella solids from Fat Quarter Shop. Honestly, that was kind of a fail. In this quilt, the pink (Tea Rose) and the red (Christmas Red) are the colours they sent (which were a great match) and the blue and green are colours I ended up finding on my own at a local quilt shop. The green (Pistachio) was actually an OK match, but I just felt that it was too dark for what I was going for. The blue (Bermuda) was, in my opinion, so far from the actual colour in the print. It didn't match at all. It was way to dark and not the right tone. Maybe it works better with the other prints in the line, but it wasn't what I wanted at all. As I said, I lucked out at a local shop and found two American Made solids that worked much better for what I wanted.

 I just pieced strips and then quilted on either side of the seam with co-ordinating coloured thread. I haven't tried fancy thread & don't really see the need to. I just pick up what colours I need at Joann (hopefully on sale). I have recently picked up some cones from Connecting Threads & am really enjoying them. Mostly just because they are going to last for so long and the price point is awesome. This quilt is also bound with a white tone-on-tone print, also from Connecting Threads.

I can't resist a folded quilt. This quilt went to a longtime friend and her absolutely adorable daughter.

This next quilt is a rainbow quilt that I cut mostly from fabric that I already had. I did pick up a few extra orange and yellow prints just to make sure that there was enough diversity in the prints. I personally hate cutting, so I usually cut the entire project out just to get it over with.

I made rainbow nine patch blocks with the white in the center. Here they are all sewn together into the quilt top. And yes, I use a mattress as my design wall most of the time. Because my sewing room is also our guest room. We just have a mattress that goes on a collapsible base for the guest room bed, so I put it up when we don't have guests and just spread the sewing crazy all over.

Here is the quilt half quilted. I quilted diagonal lines through all of the squares in both directions to make a cross hatch over the entire quilt.

All quilted and bound! It's bound with a scrappy binding made up of a variety of prints that are all on a white background. If you couldn't tell, I went/still am going through a pretty intense white binding phase.

A glimpse of the backing, which is white plus signs on a grey background from Hobby Lobby. This quilt went to really good friends who have fairly recently become foster parents. They are absolutely amazing! I kept this quilt gender neutral so they could get as much use as possible out of it.

This quilt went to my niece who is only a tiny bit older than my daughter. She was due after my daughter but decided to come a few weeks early to be the older cousin. I made these pinwheels from two charm packs--one of Moxi and one of just Bella white. Once I got them all arranged and sewed together I thought the quilt was just a little bit small so I added some narrow borders, again in just Bella white. This baby quilt is smaller than I typically make, but I really liked that it was square and just really cute. I guess I usually make more a toddler/crib size. This one is truly a BABY sized quilt.

I backed the quilt in red minky so it would be super cozy. I love the way quilting looks on minky. The pinwheels are quilted in a double crosshatch and there are free motion loops around the white border. I bound the quilt in a yellow gingham.

Again with the folded quilts--I truly love the way quilts look when they are washed and crinkly and folded.

The last of the baby quilts in this post. This one was the only one I kept--because it's for my own daughter, who was born in March. I chose a a soft palette of mint, aqua and grey. Last minute I decided to throw in that dark green Lizzy House print because I just love it and I think that it really added to the overall layout.

Working on the layout. I truly agonized over it.

The top all sewn together. I really love how the simple patchwork looks. Sometimes simplicity works the best.

Quilted along the seam lines. Bound in a white tone-on-tone print from Carkai by Carolyn Friedlander. I have contemplated buying an entire bolt of this print because I love it.

The finished quilt. It is backed in a wonderful floral print by Aneela Hoey in her Vignette collection. I loved that whole line. Beautiful florals without being overly stuffy. Overall I loved the way this quilt came out. It's crinkly and perfect--just folded up and waiting to be loved when she is a little older.