I’ve made it a tradition to make each of my nieces and nephews a quilt when they are born.  This newest quilt is for my brother and sister-in-law’s adorable newest addition, Josephine Addison (she’ll go by Addie).  It was so fun to make another little girl’s quilt, since the last two family quilts I’ve made have been for little boys (here’s the set, if you’re interested:  Ethan’s Quilt, Sammy’s Quilt, Maddie’s Quilt).

This turned out to be such a colorful string quilt, and I even got a little help from my friends in the Modern Quilting Bee!

Addie's Quilt, with my nephew Sammy helping to model

The back simply features a row of strings, sandwiched between the stark white.  I quilted it with a random stipple design, although it’s hard to see it in the pictures.

Each family quilt has a label, and for this one I decided to use my machine’s alphabet to embroider the tag.

I so hope Addie will love her quilt and that it will stay in the family for generations to come!

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Here’s a sneak peak at the fabrics I’ve picked out for baby’s quilt:

I’m kind of obsessed with this teal, apple green and grey color combo.  It’s just such a fun pairing for a baby boy!  The fabrics are Laurie Wisburn’s Tufted Tweets, Monaluna Circa 50s and a collection of coordinating Kona Cotton solids.  After setting out all the fabrics I decided to pair them up, choosing two prints that looked nicely together and a coordinating solid.  The result was the following set of fabrics.

I decided to go with a Wonky Log Cabin quilt, since I’ve never made one before and I thought it would be fun with these prints.  Here are some of my favorite blogs so far (they are 9.5″ blocks):

I’ve made 14 blocks so far and I figure I’ll need about 30 blocks to make a good sized quilt.  Halfway there!  I am also debating whether or not I want to do sashing between the blocks.  I’ll have to play around with it when I have all the blocks finished.

By the way, the nursery remodel is almost complete.  I can’t wait to show you the finished pictures, it’s SUCH a great space!  The glider turned out amazing, I’ll do a separate post for that.

[SIDE NOTE:  My new camera is FANTASTIC!  I am loving being able to take great pictures in super low light.  Perfect for these long, dark Seattle winters!]

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There’s still time to enter my giveaway for $50 to CSN stores!  Click here!!

And, check out a great tutorial for the most adorable baby sun suit ever here on Savvy Stitch!  Tell Emily I sent you!

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I’ve finally finished another quilt!  It seems like it has been ages since I finished a large quilt, and in looking back at the archives, it has been since Christmas (Sammy’s quilt).  I used my friend Dacia Ray’s Easy Beach Blanket Pattern (free!) and it worked great!  I love the size of this blanket for beach-going (about 80″ x 55″).  I was very envious of this quilt when Dacia would bring it for us to picnic on every 4th of July.  Thankfully, my jealousy kicked her into gear for writing the pattern so that’s a plus!

I made this using all large scraps I had on hand.  I like the random assortment of colors with a dominantly yellow/teal color scheme.  It also has a tie on one end which allows me to roll it up and tote it to the beach (yeah right, I live in Seattle, let’s be honest:  there is no beach-going…).

I tried something fun for quilting this.  I did wonky straight lines, intersecting each other randomly along the way.  I was hoping that the way it puckered up would mimic waves and I think it kind of worked.  I haven’t washed it yet, and I suspect the puckering will become more dramatic once it shrinks. 

Seeing it all rolled up like this makes me insanely happy.  I know…I have a problem!  I think there are support groups for this type of thing!

And one last photo, for fun.  Here’s how I spent last Saturday hand-stitching on the binding.  I love this part!  Does anyone else love hand-stitching the binding or is this another support-group worthy quirk?  Nevertheless, the weather was absolutely beautiful, the grass was green and I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

What’s your favorite part of the quilting process?

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This is my new nephew, Sammy’s quilt.  My sister and I picked out the fabrics together, and she knew she wanted something with a circular theme.  I used Anna Marie Horner’s method for making the circles, which worked excellently (although tedious!).  The background fabric is a Kona cotton in white.  I made a scrappy binding using three of the darker of the fabrics in the quilt.  I quilted this one with 2 simple straight lines parallel to the block borders.  I quilted through the quilt front and batting layer, and then added a minky backing afterwards.

Funny story, I really wanted to get a picture of Sammy with the quilt, and since we were in my sister’s backyard, I thought we could just put the quilt down on the (very slightly) sloped grass and set Sammy there.  Well, turns out the slope was a little too much for a 5 week old!  Little Sammy did 2 slow-motion rolls down the hill before mommy grabbed him up.  We were in stitches though…the sight of it was just too funny!  I happened to snap this picture as he did his first roll (I don’t think he woke up at all!):

Later that day we had a little photo shoot which, I’m sure you can tell, Sammy loved!

I like to think he’s waving ‘hi’ here:

You can probably see this in the pictures above, but here’s a close-up of Sammy’s quilt label (handsewn to the minky back):

Sasa is the nickname my brother gave me when I was little and it has kind of always stuck!  Funny coincidence, my brother ended up marrying his lovely wife, Emily, who has always called her grandma, Sasa.  Random, huh?

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These are two more Christmas presents that I made this year.  They were made for two crafty ladies who have both had an incredible influence on my sewing endeavors.  

The top is a mini quilt for my dear friend, Dacia.  I’m not sure where I got the idea for this one, but I’m quite happy with the result.  I used an old CD to trace the circle shapes and then simply stitched them to the quilt using swirly free-motion designs.  I then stipple quilted in between the circles, which helped to give the quilt some real texture.  I love the way this one looks from the back!  It’s bound in one of my newly discovered favorite fabrics (of the moment!):  Art Gallery’s “Wallpaper” by Patricia Bravo.

The quilt on the bottom was made for my sister-in-law, Emily, in hopes of brightening up those long (dark) winters in Denmark.  My brother and his wife moved to Denmark for a job last February.  Only a few months later, Emily and Aaron had their first son, Ethan.  Denmark is situated on the same latitude as Alaska, which means that in the wintertime they sometime have only 6-8 hours of light a day.  I was hoping she could hang this in the kitchen or main room to offer a bit of a sunny scene.  I used Ashley’s great tutorial for making a string quilt block to construct this mini quilt.  Rather than using paper to foundation-piece these blocks, I used a lightweight muslin.  That way I didn’t have to rip out the paper afterwards.

Here’s a close up of the backside of these quilts:

I’m itching to get started on another mini quilt.  These are so much fun to make and finish up so much more quickly than a full sized quilt.  Does anyone know of any great mini quilt patterns or have any photo inspirations they can share with me?  I’d love to see!  Post a link in the comments, if you like.

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