On my Design Wall

I've been working on another baby quilt for the last couple of days.  I love baby quilts because I just feel like what better way is there to celebrate a new baby than with a quilt?  It is always a joy to me to make a baby quilt for someone special.  This quilt is for a friend of mine who just had a little boy, Logan. 

I bought a charm pack of Ten Little Things by Moda for this quilt.  Don't you just love this line?

 I think it's so adorable.  In fact, I just may get some for a monster truck quilt that I want to make for my little guy.

Anyway, I sewed up all the charm squares into half-square triangles, along with the addition of a few other fabrics.  The brown is Kona Chocolate.  I've been playing around with some placement ideas. 

This is what I think I've decided on.  Any thoughts? 

Any suggestions or comments would certainly be welcome!  I have only ever done pinwheels with my HSTs before, and I thought I needed to branch out.

During my time at my design wall, which is actually over a table so I have to stand on a chair to put my blocks up on it, I had a slight catastrophe.

My ruler was laying half on a stack of fabric and half off.  As I was leaning on the table to grab some more blocks to put up on my wall, I heard a *crack* and discovered my ruler was broken!  I had leaned over and placed my weight right in the middle of my ruler.  Good thing I have another one, but it's never a happy thing to lose one.

I think it's time to move my design wall from over the table, or move the table from under my design wall!

This was my little design helper.  He just kept saying to me, "thanks mom for making it!"  I think he thinks it's for him...

And to end on a super exciting note...I won!!

This adorable bundle of fat eighths.  I've honestly never won anything before...and I'm sooo excited!

Thank so much to Kimberly of my brown bag studio and Judi at Green Fairy Quilts for the giveaway!

I was thinking that a fun, springy, picnic-ish kind of quilt would be fun to make with this bundle of fabric.  Any ideas for patterns?

Hope everyone had a safe and happy weekend!

I Spy Fabric Swap...Anyone?

I'm so excited about the last fabric swap that I joined that I just had to join another fabric swap a couple of days ago. 

This one is an I Spy Fabric Swap, hosted by Steph. 

I've wanted to make an I-Spy quilt for a long time, and this is just the perfect opportunity to do it! 

This is my fabric choice for the swap:

This is Sunny Happy Skies by Riley Blake

Isn't it darling?  I LOVE the little trees and the pandas.  I'm going to have to take an actual picture of my fabric because the picture on the Riley Blake website isn't very big, so I don't get good resolution on it.

Anyway, Steph is looking for more wonderful people to join in on this swap, so if you're interested, here are some links:

Go here to Steph's blog for more info on the swap and leave a comment to join.

Go here to the Flickr group to join and see some of the adorable fabrics that are starting to appear!

Some details of the swap:

You buy one yard of fabric and cut into 56 5" squares.

You send your squares to Steph, and she will sort them all and send you back 56 unique squares for your own

I Spy Quilt! 

So far, there are fishes, helicopters, toasters, toadstools and spacebots.  There are too many to even list.

How fun is that?  And everyone out there knows a child that would LOVE an I Spy Quilt! 

So what are you waiting for??

Hope everyone had a great President's Day weekend!

Baby Pinwheels

Can I say that my own stuff is adorable??

I absolutely love this little quilt!

I've had these pinwheel blocks on my shelf for at least six months; probably longer.  They've been just sitting in there waiting for the perfect occasion to pull them out and make them into a quilt for a special baby. 

What is it with me and pinwheels lately?  They are too sweet.

My brother and his wife are having a baby next month, and I wanted to get this finished for the baby shower, which is in a couple of weeks.

This fabric line is called Hideaway from Moda.  You can still find some here.  It's made from a charm pack that I picked up because I love these fabrics.  Seriously, it's so adorable I can't stand it! 

Cuckoo clocks, alpine villages, little cuckoo birds...love it!

The white is Kona Snow, my favorite.

It's sparkly and bright, just perfect for a sweet baby girl.

I quilted this one in a new pattern for me, and I struggled a little trying to direct this quilt to do what I wanted it to do under my needle.  That's why I need a longarm! 

But I'm so excited because I think it worked out pretty well overall!

I quilted the border in my go-to classic swirly pattern.

I bordered it and backed it in cotton yardage from the Hideaway line, and bound it with the same fabric.  I didn't want the binding to stand out from the border because I think that would have made the quilt way too busy.

Is that little bird sweet or what?

On a negative note, I broke 5 needles quilting this quilt.  It was quite frustrating.  I have no idea what happened!

This little sweetie measures up at 40" x 40"

{I love those sweet little toes!}

Now it just needs a label, then I'll wrap it up and it'll be ready to go!

I'm linking up to these blogs today:

Finish it up Friday with Amanda Jean

  



 Go check out all the amazing projects out there! Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend! My daughter is coming home for the weekend from college, and we're so excited! 

Polka Dot Charm Swap

I joined my first swap a couple of weeks ago, and I am so excited about it! 

Jennifer over at Knotted Thread is organizing it, and she is doing a great job! 

This swap is called the Polka Dot Charm Swap.  This is my fabric choice for the swap:

EDIT: Thanks Allison for your comment reminding me:

This fabric is Remix by Anne Kelle for Robert Kaufman

After all 28 participants' 56 charm squares are sent in, we will each get two charms of each fabric back.  I'm new to this, but I think it's an ingenious idea...a great way of getting a variety of fabric without buying up a lot of fabric!  Even getting a fat quarter of each fabric would really add up.

I have some fun ideas for all these fun polka dots swimming around in my head!

And tomorrow, I have a super adorable finish to show you!

The Three Dollar Quilt

I just made this quilt for my little boy for 3 bucks.  Yep.  Three Dollars.  How cool is that?

My little 2 1/2 year old boy is OBSESSED with Disney Cars.  Especially Lightning McQueen.

He has big Lightning McQueens.  He has small ones.  He has Lightning McQueen galoshes.  Shirts.  Jammies.  He loves it all.  The only thing he doesn't have, is a Lightning McQueen quilt.

I solved that problem!

We found the Cars flannel at our local quilt store in the remnant bin and he wouldn't put it down.  It was only THREE DOLLARS, and just a few inches less than a yard.  He loved it so much that I decided to just buy it, and see what I could do with it to make it into a little boy sized blanket for him. 

All the rest of the materials I found in my fabric stash, and the red and yellow squares I even had already cut!  It only took me about four hours to make this little quilt, from start to finish. 

I quilted it in my normal loopy pattern, just a little bigger than normal.  (Bad picture up there!)

It measures about 40" x 54"

The red and yellow checks remind me of racing flags.

Not bad for $3!  I was proud of myself for using what I already had!

I'm linking up!



 Go check what everyone's been doing.  Seriously, amazing stuff! By the way, thanks to all who posted a comment last week...I appreciate each and every one!  

Table Runner Love

I have two finishes to show you today...

A couple of table runners that I'm so excited about!

This first table runner is actually one that I talked about a couple of weeks ago, while it was still attached to my sewing machine, being quilted.

 It's made from a charm pack of Buttercup by Fig Tree & Co.  I've had the charm pack for a long time, but haven't known exactly what to do with it.  When my mom's birthday came around, being that her favorite colors are light blue and yellow, I knew that I had to dig into these fabrics. 

I love the soft, muted colors of this line, and I love the way they turned out on this project.

I paired each pinwheel with Kona Snow, my favorite white fabric.   I also used that for the sashing between each block, the borders, and for the most part, the binding.  I love how it makes the pinwheels seem to float in there.

I didn't quite know what to use for the binding, so to break up the monotony of the white, white, white, I snuck in a few little snips of yellows in the binding.

I quilted it with an all over loopy pattern, which is my favorite to quilt.  The loops and curves just seem to make sense to my brain, and they just come naturally to my hands. 

The backing is a fabric that I've had in my stash for YEARS, given to me by a dear lady.  It seemed to work well, so I was thankful I had it!

This table runner measures up at about 50" X 11 1/2"

This pinwheels runner is for my mother on her birthday, which I'm ashamed to say was two weeks ago.  Now that it's finished, I'm waiting until I can see her in person to give it to her.  I hope she likes it as much as I do!

The second table runner is for a dear friend of mine, Julie, that I haven't had the chance to see for a few weeks.  I thought I'd give her a gift to let her know I love her and am thinking of her.

This baby is made from a charm pack of Sandy Gervais' line, Lovely.  I love buying charm packs because they're an inexpensive way for me to get a little bit of fabric from the lines that I love.  They're perfect for little projects like this.

It's bound with a fat quarter from the same line, and yes, Kona Snow for the white.

I was a little paniky last week because I was in the market for some more Kona snow to do my Swoon quilt with, and I couldn't find it anywhere.  It seemed everyone was out of it!

Luckily over this past weekend, I found some at Fabric.com.  And the best part, if you spend $35, you get free shipping! 

I quilted this one in a meandering, double loopy pattern.  This is a new one for me, and a little harder for my brain to process in the quilting process, but I think it turned out nicely.

My favorite part about this runner is the cute little flower that I quilted in blue in the center of one of the rows.  It's a little off center in the block, but I love it nonetheless. 

This 'lovely' measures up at 40 1/2" x 12 1/2".  I love the bright colors in this one.

I'm also excited to say that I bound these both entirely by machine...which is a first for me!  I'm normally an old-school, sew-the-binding-to-the-back-by-hand kind of girl, but sometimes there's just not time for it.

 The only problem I'm still having is not running back over the binding on the other side with my sewing machine when I'm stiching it down on the top.  Any suggestions?  Hmm.

I love making table runners...they're a quick little project that finishes fast, and they're great little gifts.  Who doesn't love a little fabric treat for their table, and a little color in their kitchen?!

I'm linking up to Amanda Jean's Finish it Up Friday and
Confessions of a Fabric Addict's Whoop Whoop and
Sew and Tell Friday!

Go check out what everyone else has been finishing up this week!

Thanks to everyone for stopping by, and have a great weekend!



Swoon-a-licious!

I haven't been up to much these last couple of weeks, because last week my husband came down with a very nasty case of tonsillitis.  Yuck.

 He was sick, I mean, down-in-bed-with-a-temp-of-103-sick for about five days.  Poor guy.  He missed three days of school, which isn't good when you're in your last year, upper-level classes in Human Biology. 

So, I spent last week nursing him back to health and then playing catch-up when he finally went back to work and school on Thursday. 

This week, I've caught the same thing, although not as bad, thank goodness.  Even if I was as sick as he was, there would be no way I'd be able to just crawl into bed and be sick!  So thankfully I've not been that sick, but just under the weather enough that I don't feel like doing much more than hang out with my little ones and do some paper piecing!

But I did manage to finish my first Swoon block last week between sick calls for my husband! 

I decided that after reading the directions for the Swoon blocks, I should probably not cut right into my Ruby, but I should test my Swooning skills with some different fabric.

So I grabbed a couple of Kate Spain (I think they're Kate Spain, but I've had them for awhile)  fat quarters, and got started!

I was so excited that I got all my corners and points to match.  But to tell the truth, there was some seam-ripping involved!

It went so well and I liked it so much, that I decided to go ahead and quilt and bind it.

I used straight-line echo quilting on the star, and then I thought I'd try some pebbling on the white spaces.  It took me forever!  It was worth it, because I LOVE the way it turned out. 

I bound it in a grey geometric print, which I think worked really well.

All in all, I think I achieved Swoon success! 

To see more beautiful Swoon inspiration, check out the Swoon-a-long on Flickr!

And as far as my paper-piecing goes, as soon as I get these pretties put together, I'll be ready to start connecting them into a quilt.  I can't wait!

I'm Linking up!