A quilt 4 years in the making

  

(Oops! Problems with the linky!)

  The quilt I am choosing to display for the Blogger's Fall Quilt Festival is one that has been 4+ years in the making.  This is the second quilt top I ever made.  It was made to match my daughter's room and large enough for a twin sized bed.  Once the top was finished, it sat.  And sat.  And sat.  Oh, I found the original picture I took of the top.

The main reason that it sat so long is I was debating between making it a duvet cover or and actual quilt.  We have duvet on our bed and I figured, eventually our daughter would get one also.  So it sat until spring of this year.  I was determined to finish up my UFOs and this was in the pile.  One Sat we were over at my MIL's and I took that time to patch the holes in it and baste it.  Then it sat for a while longer.  I waffled a bit on how to quilt it.  I finally decided to do straight lines (only my second time!) on either side of the seams.  I am not great with straight lines and it took forever!

   I was at a monthly meeting for the PMQG and Violet showed us a quilt she had just finished.  It had a ruffled boarder.  I quized her after the meeting about how she did it.  I knew my girly daughter would love the ruffle!  Thankfully I had not bound it yet.  The quilting was about 75% finished at that point.  

  I dug though my stash and found about 1.5 yds of the perfect fabric for the ruffle.  Once the ruffle was attached I think I took another month or hand sew it closed.  I had hand sewing and am extremely slow at it!  Last night I stayed up until midnight and sewed the last stitches!  Woo-hoo!  

A picture before washing:

My tired quilt holder and recipient:

After a washing We do not have a great place inside to display such a large quilt!:

Patched with some Mendocino:

The backing is a brand new vintage sheet.  I collect them and this one was still in it's packaging when I bought it.  (Love!)

I am so glad that this is off the UFO pile and on my daughter's bed.  She is sleeping under it tonight for the first time.  She adores it and I am very pleased with the finished result.  

You should go check out the other entires, there are so many that are amazing!

(You can click on any of the photos to make them larger.)

Also linking up with amylouwho's sew n' tell.

Madyson Marilee's Cotton Candy quilt

          I made this baby quilt earlier this year.  My cousin was having his first baby, a girl!  He and his wife named their little girl after our Gran and I am so excited about that.  (I miss my Gran!)  I used a pattern on this quilt.  It's the Yellow Brick Road pattern, I love that pattern.  I have used it 4 times now.  It works up really quickly and the directions are super easy to follow.

Here is the top as a flimsy:

I chose pink and green because those were the colors they had for bedding on their registry.  I chose an all over stippling pattern because it's quick!  Here is the finished quilt:

A close up of the quilting, the binding reminded me of a candy cane:

Just a fun shot:

Spring Quilt Festival

If you are a quilt or crafty blogger you know about the awesomeness that is Amy's Quilt Festival.  If you don't than you should.  Go here and find out about it.  Go ahead, I'll wait....
 Done?  Good!

  This time around I am showing another baby quilt.  That's the majority of what I make.  (I work better on a deadline and a smaller scale.)  Some friend's were having a baby girl earlier this year.  They had a brown and green nature scheme for the nursery.  I try to make the quilt match room colors when possible.  It gives me a place to go from.  I have found that if I do not have something to start with I become paralyzed with indecision.

    I had been wanting to try a coin quilt for awhile so I hopped over to the Moda Bake Shop.  I love AmandaJean's tutorial and used most of her fabric requirements and measurements as a guideline and went from there.  I did not start with charm squares.  Here are the fabrics laid out after digging through my stash.

I loved making this quilt.  It went together very quickly.  I think it took me a few days from start to finish.  Which is great because I waited until the week of the shower to make it. (Click on the picture to see it larger.  I can only fit small pics on my layout.)

I quilted it in waves from one corner to another.  I really didn't want to use free motion stippling allover.  The straight lines seem to need something else.  I also didn't want just straight line quilting.  I needed something a bit faster...  I had seen something similar to this on Flickr somewhere.  Oh, I found it here.  I love that quilt!
(Click on it to make it larger)

 Everything except the brown sashing was from stash which I loved even more! I used some of my vintage fabrics that I got from my Gran's and Great Gran's stash.  (My Aunt gifted me 2 rubbermaid totes of their fabrics last year.)  They are both passed away so I loved being able to use it.   Two of the greens below are from them.  This is a close up of the front.

A close up of the back.

The binding fabric was cut on the bias specifically so I would get the "candy cane" stripe look.  I really like that on bindings.

Funny side note:  I added a label because the parent's were sure of the baby's name before she was born.  So three weeks later, she's born and they named her something else!  I keep trying to get the quilt back from them to replace the label but they do not want to give it up.  I suppose that's a good thing, right?

Okay so now that you are done here go visit Amy's Creative side and check out the other hundreds(!) of quilts posted.

Penny Jane's Quilt *Fall Quilt Festival*

 vPark City Girl is hosting another Blogger Quilt Festival.  She did one in spring that I browsed through a bit.  I decided that it would be fun to participate this time around.  This time she wanted us to post our favorite quilt.  So I pulled out the pictures of a baby quilt I made earlier this year.

I modified Valori Well's Urban Baby pattern for this quilt.  I love how it looks completely random but isn't.  :)  It was so much fun picking out the fabric for this quilt.  I started with that really loud one and went from there.

  This was a gift for a close friend's daughter who was born in May.  I was a bit bummed when I heard the name they chose for her since it is one of my two favorite baby girls names.  (In fact I had a flash/premonition as she was getting ready to tell me.  I wanted to cover my ears and go," Don't say it, don't say it!"  I just knew in my heart she was going to say Penelope.  I'm not sure how I knew, but I just did.)  I was heartbroken for about two weeks.  My husband thought I was being weird.  Trying to make me feel better, he said he never would have agreed to name our next one Penelope anyhow.  (Men!)  Once I got over it I figured the girl with my favorite name should be the owner of my favorite quilt and I set out to "make it so".

The cupcake fabric was something I bought on clearance over a year ago.  I think I originally bought it to make myself PJ pants but never got around to it.  I am glad I didn't.  It makes for such a fun backing.

Now go visit some of the other sites that are in the Festival!  :)

Vroom-Vroom! Car themed baby quilt

 I made this last year for a close friend.  Her baby was born in Aug '08 and I finished it a few weeks after he was born.
  I used this block pattern to make the entire quilt top:
http://happythings.typepad.com/happythings/2007/05/scrap_strips_sq.html
(I love her blog, you should totally check it out!)
    When it was done I found it kinda plain so I appliqued a car in the corner.
    I actually had the whole thing pinned and ready to quilt about a week before he was due but could not decide how to quilt the thing.  I am usually just a free motion quilter but the layout of the quilt top just didn't "say" free motion to me.  So I thought and thought.  I finally decided to attempt quilting each panel in free motion, with a car shape also.  I drew out the car shapes with a disappearing marker and got to it.
   I then pieced the binding out of leftover fabric.  I love the different colors in the binding, I might do that again.  I gifted it to her and she seemed to like it.  Plus, I was over there a few weeks ago and had to run and get something from the baby's room.  The quilt was lying on the rocking chair in his room.  
  (Who knows, she could have done that just before I got there.  But at least she cared enough to make the effort.  )

  So here is the finished quilt:


Close-ups of the car stitching:



The car applique:


You can see the backing flannel fabric here:


And here is is after pinning but before quilting:

Wintery Snowman Quilt

  I participated in the Craftster Lap Quilt Swap: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=254966.0 last Summer/Fall.  I was gifted a ton of gorgeous Christmas fabrics by an aunt who decided she was not going to use it.  So I sent out some lovely blue and white fabrics and received 11 lovely squares in return.  I made 2 of my own and then pieced this top. (I made the top middle and bottom left squares.)



I did a pieced back because my backing fabric was not wide enough plus I had an extra square.  Also I had been wanting to try one out, I had been seeing them and really liked the look.



I was unsure about the white binding because I normally do a darker binding.  But I love how it turned out.  Thank you (!!!) to my swap partners:  athenamat, audrey1999, flashleyashley, 1boy1girl1kitty2, MissDisney, j_q_adams, Glittergirl94, ritapizza, SewHelpMe, Jenicat
I love everything you gals and guy made for me!