Bradan's Quilt

My cousin Eowyn just had a beautiful baby boy, and I rushed to make him a quilt in the midst of a crazy first fall semester for me here at UVa. I'm so happy with the result! It's a simple square quilt made of squares, and quilted heavily with multi-colored thread. It's a similar palette to my last couple of blue/green boy quilts. Scrap quilts can be really awful if you aren't extremely careful about fabric placement.I like focusing on value--deciding with great care how to arrange dark and light fabrics. Here, I was challenged pretty strongly by the mix of fabrics I had available, but I'm thrilled with the results. Here's the final product:

When I finished the piecing, I was a bit worried because the white inner borders looked really stark:

Here's what helped turn the pieced top into a quilt that works: the awesome striped binding fabric, which I was makes the white a more integral part of the quilt, and the colored quilting: 

The back was a blast to put together. It's one of my favorite backs:

And finally, a crappy process picture, when I was trying to decide on the inner border color. The post-quilting photos are taken with my new iPhone. What a difference!

New project! Many Trips Around the World

I have finally finished Neil's blue and orange quilt. It's super cute and soft, and the backing is fun, though I didn't really mean for it to be as symmetrical as it is:

Tangerine, royal blue, and grey. Oh my!

On my sewing table now: a baby quilt for a precious little boy who I got to hold when he was ten days old.  I made a quilt for his big brother seven years ago. Again, I am behind--I usually get baby quilts to their new owners before those owners have taken their first breath, but I'm doing my best to finish it FAST! I found the pattern at this wonderful blog, Blue Elephant Stitches:
http://blueelephantstitches.blogspot.com/2012/01/granny-square-quilt-block-tutorial.html

These overview images gives you a feel for how differently each of the blocks turned out:

I was so excited to use the oranges and blueberries from my recently purchased stash of hyper-realistic food fabrics:

There are few things I enjoy more than watching fabrics come together unexpectedly:

I am really loving this project! This is a completely new color combination for me. What a treat it has been, using a wonderful variety of fabrics from my stash. I'm working on a really wild backing, and then I'll quilt it up.

House Quilt: finally finished!

Life got in the way of quilting for a while--I can't believe how long it's been since my last post! I have a new job, new home, new city, and new sewing space now, in beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia. I'm so lucky! I have finally finished the quilt I was working on for so long: baby Veronica will enjoy it, I hope, but she is too old for swaddling! Oh well. Here are some pics of the final product. First, the whole quilt. That's Veronica on the bottom as I imagine her someday. While the remainder of the quilt is original improvation, I got the idea for this square from a great flickr group, "sarah and molly's free piecing":

Next up, the skyscraper is my personal favorite block. I love how the cynical owl turned out, and the butterfly floating above. It did seem a bit intense for a baby quilt, but I decided it was too wonderful to leave out:

My second favorite block is this one, of a little girl wistfully standing outside a house. I have had this retro kid fabric for at least ten years, and I finally figured out how to use it without it looking corny. The snippet on the left is from a wonderful fabric designed by an artist in the southwest somewhere, purchased at the Houston International Quilt Festival a few years ago:














Everyone else likes this modernist block best! I don't mind it myself:









I think the reason it has taken me so long to finish this quilt is, I don't really want to let it go. But it will head off in the mail tomorrow. Goodbye quilt!