Pink and Black Quilt - Finished

I still don't understand why I keep taking on king size quilt projects here in all-by-hand land, but here's another one! I made this for a friend of the family, Chris. He's a very sweet 23 year old who needed something that was just his. I gave this to him last night and he was thrilled! He loves pink and black and skulls, so when I saw the border fabric I knew it was for him. That's Mr. Babyquilts posing with the quilt, for scale.



Chris picked out the centers, but I adjusted his choices to be mostly black, white, pink and purple. I just tied it on the corners this time.



Enjoy!

Constellation - Heather Ross Quilt Continues

I've been off work, and will be this whole week, so the constellation of stars is growing! Click to see them better. Check out those seagulls! The big one is 20" but it's not the biggest I've got planned. I've got a couple of 30 inchers coming.

Amazing how quickly the day goes by when I'm supposed to be cleaning the house, but instead I'm quilting. I'd make a terrible stay at home mom!



Merry Xmas and enjoy.

Conception - Heather Ross Quilt Begins

A new quilt comes to life with the completion of the first block. Does anyone else ever feel like they've breathed life into a new quilt when they finish the first block? Like something has been set in motion that will take a certain amount of time to be done forming, then it will travel to its home, live out its life and someday meet its end. Or am I just weird? Probably, lol.

My sister asked me to make this Heather Ross quilt for her son (my nephew) Ty and his big boy bed. She sent me every bit of the HR stash I've been trying to separate her from for three years, including seagulls! To me, getting to play with it is just as good as having it. It's going to be the same pattern as the Starry Starry Night baby quilt I made, but in a twin size and with no solids. The challenge is to use just the fabric she sent. I'm using dots and stripes as solids.

I like how the selvage came out in the block above. I'll post more as I have it.

Giveaway Day!

Update: The random number generator at random.org picked #32 - Tara from Crafting Into Sanity! Congrats to Tara, the geese will be winging their way to you tomorrow.

Tara said:
I am now a follower. I would love this giveaway. I have several friends who are pregnant so I would love to make this one for them.



Happy Giveaway Day!

Since I am the home of all things baby quilt, today I'm giving away a whole baby quilt! (some assembly required) The gaggle of geese you see above are just waiting to fly to your home to be joined into rows and backed with one of the two fabrics below - just add batting and you're there!

The 66 geese measure 4"X6.5" and are all hand pieced, since I don't own a machine.



Just line them up into rows and sew. Here, I've even drawn you a quilt map! Aren't I nice?



If you want to make it a larger quilt, feel free to add sashing between the rows, or wide borders, but then you won't get to back it with one of these beauties.



The winner just needs to tell me if they want the boy backing or the girl backing, choose one. Both are large enough to back the quilt in the quilt map. The pink is flannel, the blue is not.

Wanna win? Just subscribe to my blog. Then leave me a comment telling me so and saying who you would give the baby quilt to if you won. Only one comment per person, and make sure I can get your email address.

That's it! Happy commenting!

PS: If you don't win, you can still make your own flock of geese with this super easy Twiddletails tutorial. Just cut one rectangle and two squares and two minutes later, your goose is cooked. Try it!

Munki Munki Poolside

Anyone on your Christmas list want a big chunk of discontinued Heather Ross? My sister is selling a 24X38 piece of Poolside on her etsy store. It's very rare these days, especially in this big of a piece. Check it out here!

Four Patch Baby Quilt Finish

I had so much time over the Thanksgiving break that I whipped up this simple little baby quilt at Mr. Babyquilts' request for a customer/friend of his. Here in slower than molasses all-by-hand-land, you don't often hear the words "whipped up", but I really did! It only took me about four days to finish it.



I was extra proud that I made it all from stash, except the silky binding. I had just purchased those cute dogs and thought they'd be perfect for a baby boy. Yes, those are the same gray Japanese elephants I used for the baby pants I made last month. I even used some of my precious Heather Ross goldfish bags, just to be nice :) You'll also notice Heather Bailey, Joel Dewberry, Jay McCarroll and of course, Amy Butler making appearances.



The back is Amy Butler Love dots that I had in stash for just such an occasion. I embroidered the year the baby will be born, since I don't know his name yet. Click photo to see embroidery better.

Enjoy!

I Made Marshmallows for a Hot Cocoa Cake!

And it was easy! A while ago I threatened to make a hot cocoa layer cake with marshmallows, all from scratch, and today I did it! I'm taking it to a friend's birthday tonight.

Yes, it took me all day and yes, every single surface in my kitchen is covered with powdered sugar (literally every surface) and yes, I had to go to the store three times and yes, I now have a sink full of dishes, but I did it!



The marshmallows were reaaalllly sticky but tasted good! They tasted exactly like marshmallow fluff from a jar. Uh....not that I know what that tastes like ;)

You have to wet the knife to cut them apart and then throw them in the powdered sugar bowl to coat their sticky edges, but then you get perfect little blocks!



I like making things from scratch that really don't need to be made from scratch. I think it goes with my "all-by-hand" quilting mentality. But it sure is labor intensive. These are the best photos I could get of the cake, since it took all day, the lighting was not so good!

The cake ended up with three layers even though the recipe only makes two layers, because while I was at the store getting a candy thermometer for the marshmallows, my two year old made an end run around dad to dig out a big hunk of cooling cake for herself :( She ruined one of the two layers I had, so when I got home I had to make another whole cake recipe to get two more layers. On the upside, my family got to eat the ruined layer and loved it! :)



Look at those adorable little cubes! Click to enlarge. Once they're rolled in the powdered sugar they are just the softest, dearest little things, like baby bunnies.

Enjoy!

Saturday Stash

Got these fabrics yesterday for a requested pink and black quilt. They wanted bright batiks, but I happen to know they love skulls too, so they will be very surprised and happy when they see the finished quilt! I couldn't believe my luck when I saw the skull fabric in the right colors. It's going to be squares and frames, probably queen to king sized. Why do I keep committing to huge quilts when I'm an all-by-hander??? Glutton for punishment I guess! I am also quilting the gnome homes quilt for a Christmas gift, so I'll have that to show soon.

Toddler Dress and Newborn Pants

I made a little 3 year old dress for Gigi using some gorgeous purple/blue Amy Butler Love! Haven't gotten a photo of her in it yet. I used this free tutorial again from Oliver + S. That's the same tute I used for this pink dress and this blue dress and this orange/brown one. I think I'm a little afraid to try a new pattern! It's not as easy making clothes without a sewing machine.



I also made these little newborn pants with cuffs for our new grandson Kyler. I used this free tutorial from Made by Rae.

Lookin' good, baby.



I really enjoyed making them from Japanese elephant fabric and putting on the little cuffs - no big deal, just like binding a quilt.

Enjoy!

Cabin in the Snow Mini Quilt

I've always kind of wanted to make a mini quilt and so today I did! I made this Cabin in the Snow as a mug rug for a dear friend of mine. It measures 6" by 5". It's a lot cuter in person, it has more depth to the colors and you can see the little swirls in the white on white snow.



I didn't use a pattern or draw one out, I just started making tiny wonky stars by cutting 1" squares and following Sillyboodilly's great tutorial to piece them. Then I just estimated the size of everything else. The door is yellow to show that someone has a light on for you and is waiting by the fire.



On the back I used one of my oldest and most favorite fabrics. It reminds me of the bare branches in the snow of my childhood home, Milwaukee. The tiny 1/4" binding was difficult for me to sew on, witness the terrible corner on the bottom left in the photo!

I am missing fall in my homeland and wish I were soon in a cabin in the snow "up north", which in Milwaukee-speak means "anywhere in Wisconsin that is not Milwaukee".

Enjoy!

Gnome Homes Top Finished!

Hello all! Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. I went through a non-crafty period, but I'm back in the saddle now! I finally finished the gnome home top for my wonderful MIL for Xmas. I fell in love with these gnome homes last year and decided to make my own copy of some of the blocks I saw on the Bee Imaginative Blog, like these and these.


Click any photo to see the detail!


Here are a few closeups for ya. Ooops, I cut off the tree top! Oh well, still like it.


This poor gnome can't even live in his own main floor - it's a jungle down there.


Here's what my stash looks like now in my Ikea Bergsbo cabinet. The five piles on the very top are the only remnants of the quilt store fabric I used to buy before I discovered designer fabric! I have been slowly getting rid of it, and slowly increasing my stash of Amy Butler, Heather Ross, Tina Givens, etc. etc. After the great scrap bucket giveaway from two posts ago, I am down to the three buckets you see here.


How many designers can you identify from this closeup? Click to see bigger.


Here's why I haven't been posting much, too busy enjoying the gorgeous Texas "fall" weather with Mr. Babyquilts and kiddos at McKinney Falls State Park. Gigi says I'm 2 and too tired to walk anymore!

Cheers everyone, hope to post again soon.
Wendy

Three Year Old Dress

I made G another little dress, but this one is a bit bigger, that's why it looks a little funny. I made it in three year old size to last until next summer. The fabric is Arcadia. I used the same free Oliver+S tute as I used for the blue Amy Butler Belle dress and the pink Amy Butler Wallflower dress.


She refused to smile...


...until I brought out Wolf's new kitten! His name is Flash.

Anyone Want Some Scraps???

Ok, I'm finally ready to admit it. I have wayyyyyy too many scraps. I never thought it would come to this. I really didn't. I was actually buying scraps for a while on etsy, but now it's come to the point where I have too many even for me. The SEVEN, yes, seven buckets above are full to bursting with scraps and I want to give some away.



The ones I'm giving away are from these four buckets, my "regular" quilt store fabric scraps. I'm a scrapaholic, but I'm not crazy, I can't part with my all-designer scrap buckets! Three of the buckets are quilting cottons and the fourth is all flannel (the one second from the right with the suns/moons).

Here's all you have to do to get scraps: Leave a comment on this post stating your intent to send a request and I will send you my address. Next, send me the price of a flat rate box and your address and I will stuff it bursting full of scraps and send it to you. That's it. Everything must go! If you're in the U.S., a small flat rate box costs five bucks to send. If you're in Canada or Mexico, it's $11. Any other country is $13. I anticipate being able to send everyone scraps that sends me a request, but if I run out, I'll send your money back, obviously. I love being in a community where people trust each other. Ok ya'll, let the commenting begin!

Hexagon Turtle Quilt

A finish! I've been very busy lately so haven't been able to post on the progress of this quilt, but here it is finished! This was a commission for my dear friend/boss Angela for a friend of hers who is due soon. Angela wanted a giant turtle but didn't know how I would achieve that. Hmmmm. Me neither! I originally thought I wanted to make the turtle shell kind of like a spider web but that meant a hex center with parallelograms and arcs surrounding, and no cutting directions. Huh? Yeah, not that. So I remembered that I'm good at hexagons, having hand pieced literally thousands of them for the feedsack GFG quilt a few years ago, so I tried that and it worked!


I printed a small hex off the internet and blew it up to get about a five inch hex and then made a cardboard pattern from it. Angela wanted ric rac around the edge of the shell and a turned head to mimic the turtles in the Wendy Slotboom fabric I used for the piecing. I made the eye and chin out of wool felt so it could be ironed if desired.


I chose the Amy Butler honeycomb for the background because it echoes the shape of turtle shells and also kind of looks like water rippling, so the turtle is swimming. I outline quilted all the hexagons and used the Slotboom turtle fabric for the backing.


I had to applique the whole thing onto the honeycomb piece, then I cut out the part under the hexes to save it for scrap. It sure would have been a lot easier to applique this thing if I'd had a machine! I kind of thought the edges of the hexes would be cool as the edges of the shell since some turtles look like that, but that wouldn't have worked with the ric rac. So as I desperately searched for something oval that was big enough to trace around, Mr. Babyquilts simply said, "Why not fold it in half like a Valentine heart and cut it even that way?" Smarty. That never even occurred to me. So I did and it worked perfectly.


I was in a super rush for time or I would have done a few extra things like successive rings of outline quilting around the hands and feet to show paddling movement, and I might have embroidered claws on the turtle too. I would have also made a separate binding out of the blue honeycomb instead of having to turn the back to the front for binding, which I consider cheating but is sooooo much easier and faster! Hope you like it. Cheers.
Wendy

A Finish - Starry Starry Night

Yay! A finish! A big deal here in all-by-hand land. I finished this Starry Starry Night quilt for our son Corey and his soon to be born son. I found the inspiration quilt on the internet and saved it for years, then when Corey chose it I had to figure out the measurements and directions. It was easier than I'd thought!


I quilted it in an all over diagonal pattern to give it some movement.


Love the Valori Wells Urban Flannel on the back! I love that entire collection of flannels.



Enjoy!

I'm In Fabric Love!

With Valori Wells' new Nest line! Absolute love. How about you?


Photo from Spool Sewing