First quilty finish of 2013

I made this quilt top back between Christmas and New Years but never had the time to quilt this one. The fabric is Bungle Jungle by Tim and Buck for Moda. It is quilted in a meander, I think it softens the boxy nature of it and is quilted with Met.ler Silk Finish 50 weight cotton in a variagated green and yellow. I previously used this thread in another quilt and did not like it. My machine and this thread do not get along and needless to say, what should have been a quick quilting took forever. Once I remembered I did not like it, it was too late to go back. I machine bound the quilt, which is still a work in progress for me. I used some leftovers to make the binding scrappy (love!). The quilt is roughly 40" x 50". This quilt is for one of the many babies that will enter our family this year and I am super excited to have this one finished 10 full weeks before the pending arrival! Once the baby makes his arrival, I will add a tag with his birth stats.

I am linking up with Quilt Story.

Another Christmas Gift

My brother is now a married man and for the lsat 25 years of his life has used a fuzzy multi-colored dinosaur blanket for his afghan. I decided that he needed something a little more grown up for his apartment and made him an afghan. This varied the pattern to make it much wider so that two people can cozy up under it. The afghan is knitted with size 50 (yes 50!) knitting needles and 4 strans of Lion Thick and Quick yarn. I used 2 strans of an olive green, one brown and one off white. Since my brother is really tall, I kept knitting until I knew it was the perfect snuggle under size. I ended up using 12 skeins of yarn. With the big needles it knits up quick. The original pattern (8 skeins of yarn) takes 6 hours and this one took just about 9 hours to knit up. I literally cast off the last stitches Christmas Eve morning.

Wedding Gift

You may remember the stinky cell phone shots of this quilt. We were invited to a wedding in early December and for two fabulous friends who have it all, I knew I had to make them a quilt. They have a summer home near ours and during a summer party, I checked out the colors and decided on the Smooth Sailing fabric from Connecting Threads. I very heavily quilted this one in a meander and hand sewed the binding. I finished it up on the Wednesday before the wedding. I normally wash my quilts before I give them as gifts because I love how soft nad crnkly they get, well with this one, I never washed it. Thank goodness! The happy couple decided that instead of using the quilt to snuggle under that they want to hang it in their summer home!

Sew Red For Women

A Christmas Gift

My childhood next door neighbor asked me to make a t-shirt quilt for her daughter for Christmas. The only information that I was given was that her daughter loves bright colors and her favorite color is green. I ordered the white dots, the (fantastic) argyle and the monkeys online. I know the monkeys were a leap, hoever, there were lots of monkey items like pj pants and shirts included in the bag of t-shirts, so I figured I was safe. Then I started to make the quilt and it is the week before Christmas and I don't have enough fabric for the backing...I don't even have anything in my fabric closet to add to it...fabulous. I ventured out to my local quilt shop that tends to have more classic colors and styles of fabric to find some additional material. I get there and realize that I left the swatch of monkey fabric on the counter at home :(. Thank God for the i-Phone and the internet. The dots match perfectly and the brown anchored some of the bright colors. I quilted in an all over meander (boy was this sucker heavy) and I tested out my machine binding skills (so good this time!). Here are photos of her finished quilt and both she and her Mom loved it!

I am linking up with Fabric Tuesday.

Finally! Some sharing

I have two quilts to blog about that were gifts, one has been delivered and the other should be on its way any day...more posts to come. We spent New Years with my in-laws and I used that time to cut and sew blocks for the 2012-2013 Fat Quarter Shop Mystery Block of the Month (have you seen the 2013-2014? Love it). I was also able to cut out the remaining sashing that I had yet to work on. I have to finish up the flying geese for row number two and then I will have half a quilt :). Without further ado here are photos of blocks 4, 5, 6, and 7 ( in no particular order and sorry for the crummy iPad photos...I will update with better ones later).

I am linking up with Fabric Tuesday over at Quilt Story.