Hexies for Liam

Last year in the chaos of moving to Seattle, I somehow forgot to make a baby quilt for one of my cousins! Her second child, and the first boy, was born last July and it wasn't until I received an invitation to his first birthday party that I realized I had never made him a baby quilt. I had these prints in my stash, so I thought I'd play around with some hexagons. I drafted a hexagon template based on the best size to use with fat quarters (my hexie template has 3" sides, if you'd like to replicate it). The fat quarter set that I had wasn't quite enough, so I pulled some other prints from my stash as well.

(Whoops, Matt is holding the quilt upside down here! That's what I get for quickly snapping some pictures just before packing up for our trip!)

I quilted it in an all over meandering with a green veriagated thread like I used here.

The binding is a print from Modern Meadow by Joel Dewberry.

And on the back I used two flannels from my stash. The yellow is part of Anna Maria Horner's  collection (the softest flannel EVER!). And the green is a print from JoAnn's. It was too cute to pass up!

How cute are those animals?!?

At approximately 35" x 42", this quilt is still a great size for a toddler to snuggle under. And I just received a thank you from my cousin saying that Liam has been doing just that!

Birthday gifts for the C family!

I'm finally back from Illinois, and I have so much to share! I'm hoping to post about my sister's wedding shower in a few days, I'm so happy with everything came together for it. But for today I'd like to share a few birthday gifts that I made for a friend's children.

One of my childhood friends has 3 kids (ages 5, 3, and 1), all with summer birthdays. She had an amazing birthday party for the kids while I was visiting, so I made a few gifts to bring along. She requested no gifts, but I couldn't help myself!

For the 5 year old and 3 year old I made a fort kit to share (this idea was on her pinterest board, so I took that as permission to break the "no gifts" rule!):

And for each of them I made a small zip pouch filled with glow sticks and a flashlight, perfect for using in their fort!

For the baby I made a Halloween outfit (child #3 deserves a cute holiday outfit that's not a hand-me-down, right?!):

For the Halloween outfit I added a few raw edge squares to the front of a store-bought t-shirt:

And I made a simple elastic waist skirt with a ruffle trim:

I love this fabric combination so much that I created an identical skirt for Addy, and I may order more fabric so that I can make myself a pair of pj pants!

Fabrics for the fort kit:
1,001 Peeps by Lizzy House
Fabrics for the Halloween skirts:
Guising by Lizzy House

The long overdue quilt post!

Tomorrow Addy and I will be on our way to Illinois for 16 days. Now that the list-making and packing are done (I fit 2 pairs of running shoes, 2 pairs of sandals, heels, 2 dresses plus all other essentials for the trip in a small roller bag!!), I thought I'd blog a bit! This quilt has been finished for a few weeks, but we just found the time to take pictures of it this afternoon.

I started this quilt as part of the Sparkle Quilt-Along over at Canoe Ridge Creations and In Color Order.  The large blocks of print in the center of each sparkle immediately attracted me to this quilt, and reminded me that I had a small stash of Innocent Crush just begging to be cut up! I decided to use a landscape layout for these blocks, because I intend to hang this quilt behind our couch (one day, when our couch is actually up against a wall!).

 

For the quilt top I paired a medium grey solid (similar to Kona medium grey, but I think it's a Cotton Couture solid) with 12 prints from Innocent Crush. I quilted horizontal straight lines with a chartreuse thread, and about 8" from the end I ran out! I finished the quilting with a bright blue thread, and then I went back through the quilt and randomly picked out a few lines of chartreuse quilting only to replace them with quilting lines in the bright blue. I love the effect of having the blue quilting lines sprinkled throughout the quilt. You can see a bit of the quilting in this picture, this is the end where I ran out of chartreuse thread:

For the back, I pieced all of my scraps together and filled in the gaps with some solids that I had on hand. The pink is Kona in pomegranate, the purple is Kona in eggplant and the brown is Kona in taupe. I love that the quilting runs vertically when the quilt is hung this way. I think it flows so well!

Another shot of the back:

 

I left a label off of this quilt so that I could hang it with either side facing out.

Quilt stats:

Innocent Sparkles

42" x 56"

Fabrics: Innocent Crush, Kona solids, Cotton Couture solid (I think!)

Binding: Quilter's Linen in magenta, I think!

I'm so happy to have this quilt finished! I don't like to have a ton of WIPs, plus I wasn't in love with this quilt before the quilting. I think that's probably why I chose to quilt it with bright colored thread-I wanted to jazz up the flat feeling that I was left with when staring at all of the grey! Now that it's quilted, though, I'm totally in love with it. Unfortunately our living room doesn't allow for our couch to sit against a wall...so I'll just have to wait to hang this one.

I have a few more projects to share (some of which are gifts for friends in IL) so hopefully when I'm back at the end of July I will be able to blog a bit more regularly!