Tropical Warming

Last year, a friend asked me to make a quilt for her daughter and her daughter's sister.

I had already been planning to make one for her daughter, but hadn't really considered a tropical theme.

Her daughter's family has Samoan roots, so my friend asked me if I'd use some fabric she'd ordered in the past.

Opening that box of fabric was like Christmas morning!

The "Postcard Quilt" from HERE, was my original inspiration.

I tried out a few versions of it with Hawaiian fabrics, but knew that Samoan fabrics have much larger prints on them.

This one was smaller than the other one that is similar, a few pictures down.

This has smaller sashing though.

This is the larger lap quilt, that is more similar to the spacing of the real Postcard Quilt.

I made a Pokemon quilt last year for Daniel.  

It was a good block pattern for showcasing the large print on the Pokemon fabric, so I thought I'd try the Hawaiian print.

Meh...I didn't like this one so much.

I had the Samoan quilts hanging over my head for 9 months, because nothing felt right for their design!

I didn't want to compromise the integrity of the gorgeous, huge prints on the fabrics, there were a LOT of different fabrics to choose from so it was hard to narrow down which ones to actually use, and I just had a hard time focusing on what might work.

Finally, I needed to get the quilts done before my hip revision surgery in August.  

One of the recipients has a September birthday and I didn't think I'd be up to quilting while recovering.

(which I totally could have, considering how beautiful this recovery has been!)

I started folding the fabrics in different size boxes to see how they'd be next to each other.

I bought two light greenish sheets to keep the fabric laid out on, so it'd be easy to roll up and keep protected from children and pets while not being worked on.

The fun really started when I cut the first couple pieces of fabric!

It felt like a puzzle, putting different fabrics near each other, making sure some parts did/did not overlap, and making sure colors were spread pretty evenly.

Pardon the darker pictures.  They were taken in a room without a lot of light, and when it was so smoky outside.

The finished quilts side by side.

The one on the right is upside down...

This was the first time I had a professional long arm quilter do the quilting on a quilt for me!

Oh, I never want to go back to my piddly dink sewing machine quilting or tying.

It was so beautiful, and really made the quilt have a great feel and weight when it was done.

And, it was so nice to hand stitch the binding.  So relaxing.

 This picture is when I was still piecing the fronts together.

Blogger just doesn't like to do the pictures in order from my Chrome book.

The girls have or will have the quilts soon, and I hope they love them for a long time to come!

Baby Summer!

It all started when I saw this somewhere online.
I just googled it, and this doll quilt can be found here.

I loved how the simple blocks made a fun design when put together.

And, I loved how it was done with just 2 colors.

I searched and found out how to make the blocks.

I liked this video tutorial.

And, this way of figuring out what size to cut the squares for making the blocks.

I was thinking of anyone that pattern would be fun to make for.

Kelly had 3 good friends in high school who were all a great influence and great friends to her.

They were all 2 years ahead of her, I think.

All 3 got married a couple years ago, and all 3 had their first babies due this summer.

one girl, two boys

I sewed MANY blocks in raspberry, gray, and navy.

I have no filter when making blocks for a quilt.

I make far too many blocks for just one quilt, so this time I ended up with a few extra baby quilts.

First was raspberry for Baby E.

It was fun to lay the blocks out.

 My awesome birthday scissors from Daniel.

Trying to figure out borders

When I cut so many grays, some didn't look too good together on the same quilt.

So, I made a few gray quilts.

This one actually ended up being for a different baby than the 3 I mentioned earlier.

Baby O got this one.

I didn't have the right amount of border fabric to have it be the same all the way around, so I did some thread art.

That was fun, my family thought I was genius, and it made the quilt!

 Back of Baby O's quilt

 Baby E's quilt was the first one one, but the last one given.  :)

 This navy one was for Baby M, but it didn't feel right, so it's going to go to a special new baby in the next couple weeks.

 There were hundreds of extra squares I trimmed like this.

So, I cut a template, traced it onto all the extras, then trimmed so they're all uniform in size.

These will make several more quilts, rather than just being thrown in the trash.

This was also really nice for a project for me when Lilly had a hospital visit a couple months ago.

It gets really irritating to sit in the ER for hours and get nothing else accomplished.

We've been in the hospital far more than most people.

 playing around with extra blocks

 This one ended up being the right one for Baby M.

The shadows kind of skew the picture though.

 Here are the originally intended 3 quilts together. 

 This is the back of Baby B's quilt.

Llamas fit his mom's family in my mind, for some reason.

It's cute.

Like everything else I make, these quilts aren't perfect, but they add warmth, comfort, and therapy for me while dealing with medical issues and teenagers.  ;)