Another Baby Quilt : :

This is a project that I completed last year before sewing became un-enjoyable (for some reason it felt like such a chore while pregnant!!).
My brother and sister-in-law had a lovely little girl so I decided to make her a quilt!! (Like I do every time someone has a baby!)

Here is my labour of love (aka the quilt)...

Ha ha this photo makes me laugh! I had my 6'3'' husband hold up this quilt and told him to crouch down. Poor guy was so uncomfortable trying to keep his head out of the picture! The whole time he kept asking me to hurry up and take the photo. What I put that poor man through! Love him!

This pattern was from one of Camille Roskelly's books I have previously mentioned here, here and here (and probably half a dozen other places that I cant be bothered linking to right now!)

 I used the Riley Blake fabric line 'The simple life', which is pretty old now but I've been hoarding it for baby girl quilts!
I also threw in some Kona solid fabric for the boarders, background and binding, and backed it with some Tilda fabric I got from my local craft store. 
 I used my machine to attempten a loopy-type stitch using the BSR. Not too bad for a first go hey?
Of course the BSR helps immensely!

 I've really got to work on my free motion quilting...but practice makes perfect I guess. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it (although I know its a far cry from perfect!).

I've also started being 'good' and labelling my quilts!! I think this is the first quilt I have actually labelled! I know some people like to include information about the quilt and what-not on the label..but hey at least its a start!! 

I liked this pattern so much I started making a boy version. Its still sitting unfinished in my cupboard (of course), but I know as soon as someone has a boy, that will be the kick up the bum I need to whip it out and finish that one too!!

Jessica

A Vintage Quilt : :

Mr Handsome loves his mum. He treats her like a queen! (Which is one the the things that I really love about him, because that's how he treats me too).

He wants to give her something special for Christmas this year, so he asked me if I would make her a quilt.

He had a look though my quilting patterns and magazines, and we picked one out of my currently-favorite book, 'Simply Retro'.

I have made two quilts from this book so far, and I just love the patterns!

We decided to use the pattern 'Vintage'. This pattern makes a quilt that is big enough for a twin bed! I didn't have that much time (or fabric), so I decided to scale it down. I naively thought that I could just decrease every measurement by 1 1/2 inches to make the quilt smaller. Erm.....WRONG!!

That plan soooo did not work! After getting frustrated, I had to sit down with a pen, paper, and calculator and figure it all out.
It took some work, but I effectively turned the pattern into a jelly roll quilt!
I don't know if that means I can pass this pattern off as my own now...(probably not)....but I'm really happy with it! I am getting a little bit tired of really large blocks, so it was a refreshing change to make some 'normal' sized ones.

Enough chit, chat....here is my quilt!

I used the fabric line 'Winters Lane', from Moda. Its supposed to be Christmas fabric, but I think its non-christmasy enough to use all year round. I really like the mix of blue, red and grey.

The background fabric is Kona Snow, which I think matches perfectly with winters lane.
I backed it in a vintage-looking cotton that I got from spotlight, and bound it in a solid red.

Once I got over the measurement/planning stage, this quilt was really fun to put together (although, I wont lie, it DID take me a long time).

All that's left is to label the quilt, then wrap it up for Christmas morning. I hope my mother-in-law likes it!

(This is me trying to be artistic at a park near the beach! I really liked the rope and I wanted to get a photo with it!)

We are spending Christmas is Mr Handsome's family this year, which we do every other year. He has so many Aunts, Uncles and cousins, that even after 5 1/2 years of being married, I still haven't met everyone! (and I have NO CHANCE of remembering names), but it should be a lot of fun, and I'm glad my kids will have a zillion cousins to play with!

Jessica

A New Quilt For A New Baby!

My Sister had her second baby last Friday!! A darling little boy! I am now the proud Auntie to one niece and 5 nephews!!So of course I wanted to make her a quilt........Drum Roll.......

 TA DAA!! 
(Yes, I am crouching uncomfortably behind the quilt for the photo!)

I just want to say how much I L.O.V.E. this quilt! It turned out better than expected and I adore it! I used the pattern, Baby Love, from Camille Roskelly's Simply Retro. Yes I know, I have used this pattern before, but its such a beautiful baby pattern I just couldn't resist! (The fact that it whips up super quick, and I accidentally cut enough for this quilt when making this one has absolutely nothing to do with it!)

I have a quilting rule. NEVER make the same quilt twice! So for this quilt instead of just binding off my blocks, I added an additional white boarder, then my row of 'flags' (which were oh-so-easy, and look GREAT) then another white boarder. I really love how the 'flags' are free to wave about, and I'm sure will give my new nephew something tactile to play with and hold onto. 

 

I used two of my all-time-favourite fabric lines, Sarah Jane's Children at Play, and Out to Sea for the quilt top. There is just something about the little rockets, pirates, and paper air planes that just makes it absolutely perfect for a boys quilt (especially my handsome little nephew!).

 

I backed it in a minky dot fabric to make it perfect for newborn snuggles. Its super soft and matched so perfectly with the colours in the quilt top that I decided to flip it over and turn it into the binding as well. I have never sewn with minky before, but it wasn't too hard. I spray basted this quilt, which I have also never done, then just stitched in the ditch to join the three quilting layers together. 
I chose a decorative stitch on my sewing machine to stitch the binding down, machine binding being another first as well. 

 The decorative stitch kind of got lost in the minky fluff, but I was still happy with the result.
For a lot of 'firsts' on this quilt, I am super happy with how it turned out! 

 I cant wait to meet my newest nephew and get lots of baby cuddles! 


Toodles!

Jessica

A Churn Dashing Baby Quilt!

To kick off, I'm going to share with you my latest finished creation.

In June I splurged and purchased both books from the amazingly talented Camille Roskelly (who happens to also be the designer of the beautiful quilt pattern 'Swoon', of which I am anxiously awaiting in the mail!).

Her books 'Simplify' and 'Simply Retro' contain some stunningly amazing quilt, and also look fantastic in my book shelf! What more could one ask for??

She takes your everyday classic, time-honored blocks then loves and nurtures them till they grow into a happy marriage between modern and vintage. Her quilts have all the fresh-facedness (is that a word?) of a modern quilt, but the comfort and familiarity of a traditional. Genius!

So anyway, when I received her books I just knew I HAD to make them all!! So I called my Sister-in-law, who was 8 months pregnant to tell her I was going to make her a quilt!

Now is a good time to mention that when Sarah Jane's first two fabric lines came out, 'Children at play' and 'Out to sea', I was completely obsessed! Who wouldn't be, I mean fabric covered in little girls with their dolls, rockets, ships, and the most adorable boarder print you will EVER see!

Just look at that! Scrumptious!
So since I have a rather embarrassingly large pile of Sarah Jane fabric in my cupboard, I decided to use some of it to make this pattern from 'Simply Retro', which is a take on the traditional churn dash block.

This Quilt calls for charm packs (5'' square blocks), and once I cut those from my cherished stash, the quilt came together rather quickly. It was surprisingly easy, although I did make a mistake when reading the pattern and accidentally cut double of what I needed. Eek! After a brief panic that I'd cut my Sarah Jane fabric unnecessarily, I remembered my sister is having a baby boy in October. Cue one big sigh of relief *phew*. I decided then and there to make her the same quilt :)

So here it is. Ta-Daa!
I decided to add a 1 1/2'' white boarder, followed by a 1'' red boarder then finished with another 1 1/2'' white boarder. I did this purely to make the quilt bigger as the original pattern was too small for my liking (I also think it improves the look of the quilt too!). I ideally like my baby quilts to be around the 1 yd x 1.5 yd mark. This is so it can be used for longer, as children tend to have a habit of getting bigger, and I like my creations to be used for as long as possible.
I know what you must be thinking! But this quilt is square! Yes I know, but it ended up around 45 inches square, which satisfied my frugal-ness better than the 36'' square quilt in the book. 

I quilted this by echoing the inside small white square, and stitch in the ditch around the 9 larger blocks. Not very exciting I know, but time was of the essence, as my SIL was headed back to sunny Townsville in Queensland the next day and I had to have it done! (Did I mention Mr Handsome grew up in Townsville?)

 For the back I used a nice spot fabric from Riley Blake. Its not the best photo, but if you squint a little, you can almost see the quilting :)

Needless to say, my newest nephew (I have 3 now!) was so adorable. In fact it made me clucky all over again. Luckily for me the sane part of my brain was still working and reminded me that if I get pregnant now, I will have 4 children at home, as Little misses E & I don't start school till 2015! As much as I would love another, I value my sanity too much.

Signing off!

Jessica