Little Folks Quilt = Love

Just over six months in the making, my Little Folks quilt is finally finished. And I am happy to say it has won it's place as my most favorite quilt ever. 

Many of you have listened to me moan on and on about the troubles this one gave me, from piecing to basting to quilting, but in the end it was soooo worth it. The buttery softness and weight makes it the perfect summer quilt and all I want to do is wrap myself up in it and wear it around the house like a robe!

Even Mark has deemed it his favorite and is lamenting that I didn't make it king sized so we could use it on our bed. Well, I'll be using on it on our bed, anyways!

In case you haven't read my last posts on this quilt, I pieced the half square triangles of the voile with Robert Kaufman's Ultra Sateen in white, with I think texturally is really great with the voile. Piecing this was a total pain for me, but please don't let that discourage you from quilting with the voile - I have seen other beautiful quilts made from it where the quilter didn't report the same troubles. I am still pretty new at all this. I also used voile as the backing, and tried three times in succession to re-sandwich and machine quilt, but the back kept bunching on me. After cussing out my machine I decided to go ahead and hand quilt all 70x70 inches of it, and I'm not sorry I did. It really only took me a little over a week and now it has such a lovely, vintage-y look. (I used embroidery thread in white by Cosmo that my LQS carries - I love this stuff!)

Here is a peek into my little corner of the universe, where I spend the majority of my time. I love my side of the bed! I will spend the warmer months on top of the duvet and under this lovely light quilt, trying to keep Mark from stealing it from me in the middle of the night.

Before I go I want to show you the pillow I made for my Pillow Talk Swap partner. I used Heather's super simple Cathedral Window tutorial. If you've been wanting to try them out but think they look intimidating, I will tell you they are very time consuming and you have to like your iron, but really they're quite easy to do! The pillow is on it's way partner, and I hope you love it because obviously it looks great with my quilt!

The Bohemian Fraternal Twins

I know there has been a lot of build up in revealing these two finished quilts to you - and thank you to all of you who have had to listen to all my moans and groans during this creative process! I am grateful to have received so much help and inspiration from all of my blog and flickr pals. They've been pretty much finished for awhile now but I needed some decent weather to take some photos to show you.

I'm still not happy with the pictures I took of the Drunken Bohemian, but here you go. It is definitely a wild and crazy quilt, but I think it is so much prettier and the colors are not as aggressive in real life. After all the hair pulling and headaches this one caused (see this post), I am thrilled with the end result.

My original plan for the quilting was an all-over stippling with spirals in all the full circles. Well, let's just say my free motion skills are not quite up to par yet to make perfect swirls. After the whole thing was done I ended up ripping out all the spirals (I'm really spending a lot of time with that seam ripper lately!) and decided to try my first hand quilting. I love the look of the stippling with the thicker texture of the hand quilted circles!

I sort of cheated for this post, as the hand quilting is going a little slowly, and I still need to finish a few of the outer circles. I bound the quilt with my favorite print of the Bohemian collection, chocolate brown with colorful paisleys.

The New Wave Bohemian came into being when I fell in love with Elizabeth's New Wave pattern, and decided to try for a double sided quilt. As it ended up, my measurements were off and backing the drunkard's path top with it would've resulted in either the front or the back being cut too short. So, two quilts were born.

This quilt has been gifted to our dear friends whose wedding we attended in Mexico last month. I was sad to see it go but I think they really love it so that makes me happy. To ensure that I would be able to part with it, I embroidered their name and wedding date and place on the back.

The sashing and backing are Kona cream which coordinates with the lighter prints. I did a simple line quilting to keep this one soft and cozy for the newly weds.

Here is the back of the Drunken Bohemian - just big leftover squares. I wasn't sure about this at first but now I love it.

And here are the twins in there last photo before being separated!

It feels good to have these all done. Now time to move on to the million other projects I have going!