Baby Quilt for Priya

A friend of mine from work is having a baby imminently and at the beginning of March we had a baby shower for her right before everything shut down.  Unfortunately I forgot about it until two days before so I was on a tight turnaround for making a quilt!  I've really been on a no-fabric-buying track for the past couple of years, but the tight time frame was enough that I felt ok going to get a pre-printed panel from JoAnns.  This one was designed to be made into a fabric book or pillows or something, but I just cut out the squares and bordered them with things from my stash.  Quick and easy!

All four blocks are adorable, but I think my favorite is the one with the turtle and hedgehog. The baby is a girl, and I thought it was a good balance of pink but not PINK.  I pray for the safety of Priya and her baby as she's born during this chaotic time!

And using the panels also reminded me of the pre-printed panel quilt I made when Anna was born.  It's so weird to think about,  we didn't know her back then (she wasn't born yet of course), and we called her the animal cracker.  She turned 8 last week (we sang happy birthday on Zoom), and I can't imagine not having her in my life. 

This one for Anna was another from my panel+scrap stash, and that binding has neon frogs and was made out of my college dorm curtains.

Baby Quilts

Two wonderful friends from the church choir are both having babies this spring and summer, so a few months ago I set about making some baby quilts for them.  Both used HSTs, and I wound up piecing so many I had enough for three quilt tops rather than 2.  I had fun arranging the settings.  I got two of them quilted and finished and given to the new mommies (before the babies were born even!) and at some point I'll quilt up the third top and donate it to charity.

These are the three arrangements, and here are the final quilts.  

And of course the squaring up crumbles.  A never ending task.  ;)

I had a good time making these and they more than fulfilled my piecing urges for the year.  I hope they will be good play/sleep/warmth/spill wipe up surfaces for their new owners!

Pieced Quilts

I have a friend at work who is having a baby fairly soon, so this weekend I buckled down and made a baby quilt for her.  Baby and charity quilts are about the only piecing I ever do, so it was fun to do something a bit different.  I decided to make a large churn dash block after seeing Mary's really cute churn dash table runner.  My rule for things like this is that I can't buy new stuff- I have to use what's on hand, because I really have plenty.  It does mean I don't have much in the way of kid-type prints, but I think the colors are bright and fun enough for a baby.  And I backed it with this great fish print that I have several yards of (thanks Georgia!!).

While I was at it I decided to go ahead and finish up a couple charity quilts I'd pieced a long time ago and never quilted.   This first one used up a bunch of my favorite prints.  I decided to make it light weight, with no batting, but backed with minky so its very soft and snuggly.  I quilted it and then self bound it.  It finished about 70" x 45" so it's a good lap size.  Sorry the picture is so terrible!

This second one I belatedly realized was much larger pieces of prints, and I think I must have pieced it intending it to be the back of the other one.  At that point it was too late, and I didn't really want to quilt another something that big, so I cut the backing piece in half and used one piece as the top and one as the backing.  After quilting and binding it finished about 50" x 40" which is a good baby quilt size.  Both baby quilts are bound with some pretty turquoise blanket binding I found in my stash.  It was kind of a pain to work with since it can't be ironed very easily, but it gives such a silky finish.

I hope my friend and her new baby like the churn dash quilt, and I look forward to dropping off the other two at one of our local women's shelters.  It's always great to finish up things that have been languishing, especially if they have a useful purpose!

I Like #35

This was another super busy week, last Wednesday and Thursday I was in Washington DC to raise awareness on Capitol Hill for the importance of Vision Research and then on Friday my sister and her kids came up for a visit.

1.  I love crafting with the kids!  Alex and Anna are super fun, we took them to the state fair to see all the animals and then to Disney on Ice.  But in the afternoon when we got home we made sock puppets.  It was a blast going through my stash to find embellishments for them, and they spent the rest of the weekend running around "puppeting".  I love getting to hang out with them, they're so fun and enthusiastic!

2.  I liked seeing the day-to-day activities of congress.  We met with several of our Senators/Representatives/their staff while on Capitol Hill, and though I'm not sure how much good it did, it was interesting to see how things worked.  In the large House office buildings  each representative had a suite of offices.  Walking along the hallway it reminded me of nothing so much as a very fancy dorm hallway.  All started with the same large wooden doors, state and national flags, and state plaque, but then some representatives had tacked up posters, or put out guestbooks, and one even had a life-size Elvis cutout!  The icing on the looks-like-a-dorm cake was the office suite that had a toaster oven outside on the floor....

3.  I liked walking around on Capitol Hill.  I didn't get a chance to see much, the trip was super super short, but at least I got a few snaps.

4.  I loved getting to see the Library of Congress.  I'd never been there before, and it reminded me a great deal of the Chicago Public Library/Cultural Center building I recently got to visit.  All the mosaics were lovely and so was all the symbolism throughout.  I was lucky enough to get on a free tour, but I only had a very very short time there before I had to go catch my flight so I didn't get to see nearly all of the library or exhibits.

5. OMG Illuminated books!!!  I was so excited that the Library of Congress had its copy of the Gutenberg Bible on display.  Of course we couldn't turn the pages or anything, but it was so momentous just to get to see it.  I could have stared at it for quite a while, but unfortunately there were large crowds of people so it didn't seem fair to just stand there taking up space.  What an important book in the history of reading and literacy....

Mostly what I like right now is that I don't have to travel anywhere else until Thanksgiving.  I'm certainly not complaining,  it's a privilege to have traveled so much this year, but gosh I'm excited to get to stay home for a good long while....

Thanks as always to LeeAnna for keeping us going!

Baby Quilt for Ava

My good friend Maggie is having a baby very soon, so of course I had to make a baby quilt for her little girl Ava.  I had a charm pack of minky squares I wanted to use but the colors didn't really go well together.  I pulled out the blue ones though to serve as inspiration.  I used all stash stuff which makes me happy and I think it turned out cute.

We're looking forward to her arrival!

Quilts for Tristan and Amber

When I was a kid, my family was very good friends with three other families, all of which had two children the same age as my sister and I.  Originally, we lived in the small New Mexico mountain town where I grew up, but over the years, all the families but ours moved away.  Even after they started to move, every year from about the time I was 6 to about 15, the four families would meet somewhere, usually a national park, for a week of camping, hiking, bicycling and fun.   We're all grown up now (theoretically), and two of the sisters are now pregnant at the same time, so my mom and I decided to make baby quilts (is anyone surprised).  I pieced them and took them for her to quilt. One is just a panel with some pieced borders, and the other is a single big pinwheel block.  Simple but cute.  Congrats to Tristan and Amber!!

Alien Game Mat

Anna's birthday was just a bit ago (she turned 4), and I recently saw this Silly Alien Beanbag project by one of my favorite bloggers, Mollie from Wild Olive.  I decided to make up a set for Anna, and it was a blast.

I did the mat a bit differently than Mollie, mine is grey fleece with a cotton binding and small moon craters appliqued on with rainbow satin stitch.   But really, the best part is the alien beanbags.  With their crazy eye and bright colors, you can't resist playing with them.

Anna and I played beanbag toss (can you land on the mat?  how about the big crater?  how about the small crater?) but even more fun was just playing aliens.  Alex wanted to get in on the fun too and we had a great time pretending to be aliens on all the different grey planets.  Thanks to Mollie for such a fun project!

Easter Crafts

Talk about getting behind!  Just before Easter, I was lucky enough to get to have Walker and Raegan over to do Easter crafts.  They'are always so enthusiastic, and we did a couple of different things, but my favorite was the string-wrapped Easter eggs.  I remember making these as a kid and loving them, and then trying again as an adult, with only limited success, so I was determined to make it work this time!  After some trolling around online, here's what worked for us.

1. Soak a ball of thin cotton string in starch for a while (maybe about an hour)?  I put the string and starch in a ziploc bag and that seemed to work ok.
2.  Cover workspace with plastic and pour ball/starch into a bowl.
3. Wrap string around a blown up balloon all over-  don't try to leave a hole for the opening, it will make you crazy.
4. Put string wrapped balloon in oven at ~200 for about an hour.  Alternatively you can let them dry overnight, but they need to be really really dry, and it's really tempting to poke the balloon out.  We actually cooked in the oven for about an hour, then I turned off the oven and just left them in there until the next morning.
5.  Carefully pop balloon.  Mark where you want the opening to be using a marker and then cut out with sharp scissors.
6. Hot glue trim or rick rack around the opening to help stabilize loose open edges.
7.  Stuff with Easter grass and candy!

Walker wanted red thread with turquoise rick-rack and Raegan wanted pastel rainbow with pink ribbon.  I used pastel rainbow thread but went with creamy brown ribbon.

Of course afterward, there were still partial rolls of starch-soaked thread with which it is impossible to do anything else, so I made a couple more.

We also painted canvases, using cut out letters as resists, and the kids seemed to like the negative space leftover when we peeled off the letters.