Low volume finish

I finished this quilt for some dear friends and their new baby boy.  I did not finish it by the time the baby was born, but I wasn't too far behind.

 I started the photo shoot on a nice fall day with lots of sunshine.

I used mostly low volume fabrics, with an emphasis on some tree bark and rock fabrics that I had found at a quilt show.   Half of the accent pieces were dark grey/black and the other half were colored.  Just enough to give it a pop of color.

I quilted it with a wood grain texture.

Later I finished the photo shoot and it was cloudy with snow on the ground.  But I'll admit, that's the way I like it best.

The pattern, Mad Dash, can be found here.

Linking up with Finish it Up Friday.

Pluses

Plus tornado is finished.  Let's be honest...it was finished a while ago.

The pattern is from here and the coloring is sort of from here.  I did less of a rainbow pattern, and the inside pluses are a different color.  I'm not completely sure why I did that.

It is bright and colorful for the little baby though.  When I stopped over to give it to her parents, they both noticed that there was a music score in the inside pluses.  They both, separately, said, "I wonder if I can tell what the music is."  However, it is well quilted and in small squares, so they were not able to figure it out.

I quilted something different in each color family.  I just did whatever I felt like, using thread that was about the same color as the fabric.  Oranges got a double orange peel and greens got back and forth.

Pinks got a double loop.

Blues have a wood grain.

Yellow has sea foam.

Purple has squares and rectangles.

And last, but not least, the background has pluses.

It was a fun quilt.  It isn't my new favorite, as newly finished quilts often are, but I did enjoy picking out all the different fabrics and different quilting patterns.

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday.

Owl Quilt

My mother-in-law made this quilt for her newest grand-niece.  I had the honor of quilting and binding it.

The rows with flowers in the fabric received matching quilted flowers.  This time I tried putting leaves on some, as seen below.  I also put circles in between some petal rows, like the fabric.  It only turned out ok, so I didn't take any pictures of it.  (Also peaking through this pictures is the meandering stars that I used by the owls.)

The rows with owls on branches received wood grain.

The outer border had leaves.  I feel like I've been doing a lot of leaves lately, but they just match all the fabrics really well.  The sashing had back and forths.

This was my September goal...I finished up!  Also linking up with Finish it up Friday.

Interlocking triangles

The baby is here!  He showed up a bit early, but is doing well.

So obviously he needed a quilt.  I was going over to my parents' house and thought it would be fun to get some pictures there.  It's amazing how many fun backgrounds there can be even just going to a different house.

The design is an original.  I found out that they had this rug on their registry from Crate and Barrel.  Then I used the Play Crafts' Pallette Builder to get the colors.  I ended up changing the yellow and orange a bit so that the quilt would be a bit brighter, but am curious to see how well the others match.  My design also plays on the triangle theme, but isn't too similar to the rug.

I went back and forth on the pink...the gender was not found out until the baby was born, so should I keep the pink?  There is pink in the rug.  I decided to do it.  There isn't too much pink and it seems silly that boys shouldn't be able to have a bit of pink too.

This is my favorite picture.  It is a rock pathway that is really only about five yards long and goes no where.  But it made a great background.  If you look closely you'll notice that inside the triangles is a light tan (Kona Putty) and outside is white (Kona white).  The only reason is that I ran out of putty and was didn't want to order more.

Quilting - the triangles have a wood grain in a matching color thread while the background is stippled.

I used a flannel on the back.  I don't like it quite as much as minky, but I couldn't find the right color in minky.  The quilt is bound in red sateen.

The other colors I used were Kona Bluegrass, Mushroom, Stone, Straw, Primrose, Sunny, and Rich red.  And an orange...I can't recall where it is from.

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday, Fabric Tuesday, and Sew Cute Tuesday

He is Risen!

He is Risen!

He has risen indeed!

I finished the quilt in time for Easter, as I was hoping to do.  The fabrics were given to me by my aunt, who loved the fabrics but didn't have the time to make them into a quilt.  So I'll be able to give it to her tomorrow.  It was my first time really playing with value and it was a ton of fun!  I will have to do it again sometime.

The cross is quilted in brown thread with a wood grain pattern.  There are lines (like sunshine rays) coming from the center of the cross (a gold metallic thread on the top and a red/orange/yellow varigated on the bottom) symbolizing the new life that Jesus gave us.  I had quilted a white cloth over the cross at one point too, but it didn't look right.  I think it would have been better to applique it on,  but since I've never done applique and had a deadline I didn't do it.  The cross is still empty - that's what matters.

There were a few prominent wrinkles in the back, but since it is so loosely quilted they aren't too obvious.

Happy Easter!

A hard finish

I just finished Baby V's quilt.  I had timed it so that it should have been finished about a week ago.  However, the binding acted up on me.  It was terrible and almost made me miss the March ALYOF goal (#70 from the begining of the month).  But maybe I should start at the beginning...

I started this quilt by finding the fabric, which I rarely do.  Then I used a few QDAD sessions to figure out exactly what I wanted to do.  The first quilt came out like this, and while I love it I also knew it looked nothing like what I was going for.

So here was the next try - completely different, but what I wanted (although in different colors).

Here's the finished product. 

Since the print squares go between colors, there were a lot of T-seams.  It was fun to figure out the best way to make it in order to have a miniumum number of pieces and have it not be too hard to make.  The T-seams really weren't too bad though...maybe one of these days I'll be ready for Y-seams.

Her brother also had his blanket pictured on the wood pile.  We got rid of the wood pile, but the wood holder has been a nice prop for quilts.

I really enjoyed quilting this one.  I put a different design in each color and matched the thread...so the back looks pretty cool too.

Grid play in the pink and wavy lines in the orange.

Clam shells in the yellow and wood grain in the green.

Woven cross-hatch in the blue and loops in the background.

So...back to the binding.  I like to use the pre-made satin binding.  I had to go to two different stores to get the two packages I needed.  (And that is after leaving the first store empty handed once because the line was so long and not moving.)  I've been feeling that my bindings are getting a lot better lately, so, of course, I tried to switch it up and make it better.  It didn't work, and I ended up unpicking a bunch of places.  But it's on and when you don't look too closely it looks fine.

Rainbow zigzags

Rainbow zigzags (i.e., Eleanor's quilt) is finished!  It was my February ALYoF goal, and not only did I get it done, I even gave it to Eleanor.

 

I started with a pack of Kona Classic hexagons.  I cut the hexies in half, and then each half into a parallelogram and an equilateral triangle.  I used the parallelograms in the quilt and have a bunch of triangles just waiting to become something really cute.

 

For the larger parallelograms I used fabrics that I already had...except for purple.  I had to go buy two more purples because I didn't have anything dark enough. 

 

The colors are all the same size within a column, but the background (Kona Putty) varies.  It was a nice semi-improve way to do it.

 

The quilting is a wood grain.  Nice and easy and it felt just right for this quilt...especially since the quilt itself is rather busy.

 

The backing is a minky.  The background is white which doesn't really go with the Putty on the front, but it was just so much fun.  And of course nice and soft.

 

Once again we had a recent snow and so I took advantage of the pristine backdrop.  It's really quite fun to take pictures in the snow.

The original inspiration for the quilt can be found here, although I've seen a few other similar ones around too.

Linking up with LAAF, Whoop-whoop Friday, Finish it up Friday. (Once the linky parties show up.)