A Quilty Finish!

I am excited to show you a quilt finish today! I finished this quilt several weeks ago, but the weather hasn't been great, and indoor pictures just didn't do it justice!

 

I may have mentioned this before, there have been a lot of baby announcements in our small office. We've had three babies join us, and a fourth one due in March! How exciting!!

This first quilt is for a beautiful little girl, who arrived in early November! Mom and her proud, big sister came to the office this last Friday to show her off! We all got a chance to cuddle her and share in the joy! She is adorable! The shower will be in January, so I can't wait to give her this quilt!

 

The pattern is The Missing U, from the book Sunday Morning Quilts, by Cheryl Arkison and Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts.  My previous post can be found here.

 

 I love the little bits of whimsical fabric in it. It can be used as an I-Spy quilt, too!

 Check out this jazzy dude. Proud daddy is a music teacher, so this'll make him chuckle!

 I quilted it with an all-over meander using variegated thread. I am very happy with how it turned out!

Linking to Lily's Quilts - Small Blog Meet and Sew Many Ways.

The Missing U, A Work In Progress

I woke up to this today! My hubby is sweet...and better at remembering dates that me!

 
 I've spent the past week like this....

Blech, summer colds are THE WORST! Being under the weather means I haven't felt like being out in the garden or enjoying the warm weather we've been having.

Without the energy to do much else, besides working  and sleeping, and even that was hard, I managed to stitch some blocks last weekend and continued to stitch a couple of blocks over the last few evenings, working away on this "The Missing U" quilt from the book, Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and CherylArkison.

See the little owl applique?

A set of three blocks takes me about two hours to make, depending on how big or small the scraps are.  The blocks are smaller than those in the book. I made mine 12.5" unfinished and I've made 20 blocks, so the quilt top will measure a nice 48" x 60" when done.

I am so glad I sorted my scraps as it inspired me to make these colourful blocks! There are scraps in here from my very first quilt (1991!) and scraps I recognize that friends and fellow quilters have passed along to me, it has lots of variety (there's even a snippet or two of Habitat by Jay McCarroll, from our guild's Habitat Challenge...my challenge is still just a top)!

I dug through my stash and found this kiddie fabric I have had forever! It's a teal green (not sure if the colour is true in the picture); with little stick drawing boys and girls. All the years I've had it folded in my stash, I didn't know it had a border on it! Super cute!

I think I'll use this fabric on the back. It's a Patrick Lose print from 1996! I'm glad I'll finally do something with it!

Have an awesome week!

Playing with Scraps

I was thrilled to be able to attend a trunk show presented by the very talented Cheryl Arkison of Sunday Morning Quilts fame!

And I was super-excited that I was able to purchase a copy of her soon-to-be released book, A Month of Sundays!

I already own her first book, and it was neat to see the quilts "in-person" and hear the back stories for many of the quilts, and the quilt names. Cheryl is a great presenter!

Although I do cut up my scraps for future scrappy projects, using Bonnie Hunter's Scrap User's System, I have only been doing this for the last couple of years, and when people know you use scraps, they give you their scraps! So I have an abundance of scraps...a ton of scraps...bins of scraps!

I have slowly been working through the scraps, cutting them into squares, bricks and strips, but it is taking forever! In the meantime, there are a lot of goodies in there that I could probably use in my projects, if only they were more accessible.

I read Cheryl's scrap sorting method in Sunday Morning Quilts, but until she shared the logic behind her sorting method (by colours, strings, and selvage triangle trims are some of the examples), and how it made it easier to access and use them, it didn't sound like something I needed to do. It totally makes sense now! And, she said it doesn't take that long at all.

With my supervisor, aptly named Patches, keeping a watchful eye, I got started.

Well, it has taken me hours to sort through several bins, but now I can see the colour piles, what I have a lot of, and what I don't.

 

Inspecting the progress

Scrap explosion!

Some oldies, and favourites.

Moda from 2003-2004

Aren't these cowgirls cute!

I made a dress for my daughter with this fabric!

This fabric had antique red Ford Trucks on it.

Scribble Bears from P&B Textiles

Since I have cut up a lot of my scraps, they have kind of been picked over, so many of them are of the darker, tonal variety. Those need to be cut up smaller and used in something else.

I grabbed my pile of greens and pulled out all the clear, mostly bright colours, no tonals, and sewed together three "slabs" this morning.

Fun to do, and fairly quick using the larger pieces. Another quilt I made, Modern Crumbs, used much smaller pieces, so the blocks took a lot longer to piece. It was liberating to use the bigger pieces in my scrap pile!

Nothing left but snippets to stuff a cat bed!

And of course, my Qu.A.D.D (Quilter's Attention Deficit Disorder!) means that I can't keep focused on one project at a time...so, I have been cutting up fabric to make a low-volume quilt, inspired by FITF's Marcelle Plus Quilt and using this block size post on Flickr. I have enough brights cut out for 90 blocks, enough to make a queen size quilt AND a lap size quilt! Whoa Nelly!!



Of course, I had to enhance my stash with some low volume prints, so I bought these beauties from Super-Buzzy! I found a link to Super Buzzy on another blog, and... Could. Not. Resist! The delivery was SUPER-FAST and I am so pleased with the fabrics. I had them mail to Ship Happens in Blaine, to save on delivery (mailing from the US to Canada is sooo expensive) and it was mailed the next day and these lovelies were in my hands within a few days! I highly recommend them! 

 

 

Happy quilting!

 

~Kat