Noa's Quilt: Done!

It's a record! Layla's baby quilt (my first ever quilt) was barely finished before her first birthday, and Judah didn't get his medieval-themed twin-sized bad boy until he was almost three. The fact that Noa is snuggling and drooling on hers at 5 months means I deserve several medals. Feel free to ship them to me.

The fabric:  Tule collection by Leah Duncan for Art Gallery Fabrics. Entire collection used.

The binding: Simple white dots on Navy from Joann

Piecing style: Log cabin, 2' strips (to have a connection with Layla's)

Size: Crib size, about 44" square

Quilting pattern: ultra-easy diagonal X's across the 16 blocks

Fabric purchased back in June--4 months before her due date.

4 blocks done by August...and not a lot in between then and this past week.

The results:

Thanks, daffodils, for blooming just in time to be perfect matching spring scenery.

Over the picket fence like I'm artsy, fools.

We only ever rake the picket fenced-in part of the back yard so there is like 9 years of leaf cover over on this side.

The back was a quick and simple patchwork with the leftovers. I love how it features the same fabrics but in a completely different way...totally changing the look.

Heavens, I love a hand-bound quilt with perfect mitered corners.

Happy, happy loving feelings

Even prettier background scenery: big sis!

 What does the intended recipient think?

She thinks it's jaw-droppingly great.  (And if she didnt want me putting words in her mouth then she shouldn't have opened it so wide).

She picked you some flowers.

Working those pectoral muscles.

 Our lil' Spring Bean

She better not even think about learning to crawl.

 Someone take her keys, I think she's had too much

Baby-Making

Don't you just wish this post was a play-by-play of how Jesse and I made our baby? I must dash your skeevy little hopes of a true romance essay (though Jesse could totally be a hairy-chested love novel cover model, obviously), for this is about things I made for a baby.

One of my very best friends (and frequent appearer on the blog), Lena, is having a baby girl who is due 27 days before ours! This is Lena's first baby and you know those non-mom friends you have who are so weird or hilarious or easily-grossed out about YOUR pregnancy that you are like, "wow, I cannot wait to see how you are when youre pregnant?" well, Lena is definitely one of those, and she has super-duper not disappointed in being highly entertaining as she discovers the manifold joys and WTF's of gestating a baby in your ladyparts.

Lena and her husband are godparents to our kid,s and Lena was right *there* when Layla was born as our official birth documenter. Like SHAZAAM up in the perineum with the DSLR (tell me THATs not true friendship). She wrote a wonderful and hilarious account of the birth that is all the more enjoyable when you realize the girl who penned this post 4 years ago is giving birth in 6 weeks.

Another thing about Lena is that she is one of the most generous people I have ever met and is a legendary and prolific gift-giver. So when the invitation to her baby shower arrived, I knew I had to step it up and come strong.

Here's what baby Finley Elaine has waiting for her on the other side from her Auntie K8 (the pics are crazy over-saturated and blown out for some reason and I have no patience to fix them. Apologies to your retinas):

a herringbone baby quilt that was shockingly simple to put together and then incredibly difficult not to keep for myself.

the quilting pattern just followed the zig zag of the front 1/4" from the seams on either side. the backing is a snuggly flannel in Lena's signature grey (girlfriend LOVES a neutral)

 I'm so glad I went for the single little chevron of the backing fabric within the herringbone pattern. And the black and white stripe binding is just crispy goodness.

 i added the monogram to the back side for personalization but also to prevent myself from stealing it. I had to hand-applique the name on to avoid quilt lines through the name or backward name stitches showing up on the front (if I had machine stitched the letters on...tricky conundrum)

 taking pictures of this finished project was way more challenging than expected. I spent about 15 solid minutes getting this view all set up on the wall, then waddled back into position and snapped the first pic. Are you freaking kidding me?! My head almost exploded in this moment.

I was going to just give the one gift of the quilt, but then I just couldn't stop. I haven't made one thing for my new baby girl yet, but I was off on a tear for Lena's. 

 

matching onesie and baby leggies (tutorial here from another BFF, raechel) combo. love this little ATLien already.

another combo with a bow (I am expecting a head full of hair on this babe from the get-go since Lena and Elliot have thick, lush locks aplenty)

And then one last little touch for baby's room...or I guess wherever Lena wants to put it. Her beloved NYC:

Elliot proposed to Lena atop 30 Rock and they're pregnancy announcement pic was taken there too, so it' felt right to bring a little happy, colorful big apple into baby girl's space. (pattern from my favorite shop)

The shower was unreal. I ate about a kilo of bleu cheese (unpasteurized because I'm a rebel like that) and 4 large shortbread cookies, and washed that healthy meal down with a liter (mama's feeling metric today!) of sparkling punch. Ain't nobody loves a lady-shower style punch like this chick! Lena got SO MUCH wonderful baby swag and we all enjoyed staring at her opening gifts for 2 hours straight trying not to be awkward. 

what is wrong with us? I complain, but this is a pretty spot-on representation of our whole friendship. (note to self: IRON the shirt after it arrives in the mail in its flat-packed state)

30 weeks and 40 weeks. and my spiritual gift of closing my eyes at the EXACT moment of shutter click shows no signs of diminishing. 

I'm not sure if I have ever been as excited for a baby's arrival that wasn't occurring in my own birth canal. Baby Finley hasn't taken her first breath yet, but is already crazy-loved and prayed for. I cannot wait to get my hand on that little nugget--I might not give her back...especially if she's wrapped in that quilt. 

echo quilt : elephant gestation

oh, hey. i once blogged about my progress on a quilt i started back in march...of 2012. 

with the ferocity of a rabid honey badger, i have just barely snatched this project back from the brink of the abyss known as "projects keight forgot about." (thanks for the patchwork scraps, stupid!).

last thursday, 22 months later, i FINISHED! in this same time frame i could have also fertilized the egg of an african female elephant and loved her through gestation and birth of her elephant...cub? pup? gosling? 

i knew it was finally time to finish the quilt when i started feeling like i wanted to change the paint in our living room. see, last summer i added two accent stripes of color (one on each gray striped wall) and i used this fabric line as my color story. i actually took the fabrics themselves to home depot and matched them. so the fact the the paint inspired by the quilt is already seeming old and in need of a change BEFORE i have ever snuggled up under the quilt itself was a red patchwork flag that i needed to [apache] jump on it and complete this queen sized beauty beast.

the pin that inspired this layout...i pretty much straight up copied!

i opted for a vertical stripe pattern for the backing with a few of my favorite prints from the line and some coordinating solids. i opted to go with a soooper simple quilting pattern of plain rectangles. i HATE the quilting portion of quilts because my machine is tiny and i just really stink at it. i *might* try my hand at free motion, but i just dont know if i can fit in to the big girl panties it would take to try it out! (is it so hard? is it worth it?)

i'm a fuzzy smitten kitten over my woven etsy labels that i commissioned from The East. all my projects now sport one of these bad boys. this is the first one to go on something i made to keep to myself. i feel excited about this.

my sexy clothesline.

family heirloom fa life. believe dat.

QIP

.
quilt-in-progress, people.

i am the slowest quilt maker ever. layla's and judah's both took me a year to complete...with massive clumps of months of complete neglect mixed in.

in that esteemed tradition, i planned out my next quilt and got the fabric for it back in march. i think i worked on it twice in may and maybe once in the fall.

well, i picked that baby up last night after finishing a zirgle-million etsy christmas orders and was dying to sew something for ME. 

it is now my goal to complete this beauty over christmas break. we'll see...

 the pieced top. i used a layer cake of lotta jansdotter's echo collection, using all of the prints. i love it HARD

and i am getting the back put together now. 

i cant wait to make this our #1 stunna living room snuggle blankie. i am attempting to make my own christmas present. i better not let me down. 

totally WIP'ed

there really is magic in showing off your unfinished business.

ever since i posted my work-in-progress (WIP) wednesday stuff, i have been nose to the grindstone (forehead to the bobbin?) to finish up layla's project and show it off.

what all those little squares were: a pillow for layla's crib/room/head!

i die. seriously, i am beyond in love with this thing

i was fresh off judah's quilt and wanted to keep the magic alive with another quick quilting project. so i pulled out a bunch of my tiny "good folks" scraps leftover from layla's quilt. the pillow is only 11x15" so these squares are little bitty.

some of the fabrics are so rare and hard to get ahold of that i hardly had ANY for layla's quilt to begin with. so finding even more little squares of these rare gems was tough. and i really wanted every fabric in the line to be represented here, because i am a sick freak who thinks anyone might ever really count them and know. to get the rarest ones, i actually had to sew together a few WEENY pieces just to get a 3"x3" sqaure's worth out of it. i milked the junk out of those scraps!

and for extra softness, both sides of the pillow are quilted. so theres the pillow, and then essentially two quilts (fabric-batting-fabric sandwiches) cover it up. i used one of the decorative stitches on my machine to get a different effect. it's a squiggledy line.

and then i wanted to put her name on it but since the fabrics are so busy and colorful, i went with crisp white for the letters so they would really pop and then appliqued them on. more white for the binding and then i [reluctantly] turned it over to little stinkerbell herself.

you can see on that yellow fabric where i had to piece two scraps together to get a big enough square. you can also see my FLAWLESS applique (i brag because i care) and my shmeh-blah quilting lines (practice makes perfect)

i used the same fabric for the back as i did on her quilt. it's one of my most faves from that line. i love that it's gray like her not-so-girly room but also pink because, hello? she IS a chicky boom boom, after all. please note how i intentionally lined up the stripes to be opposites on either side and framed it all with the dots (i am maturing before your very eyes). i do wish i had used the backing fabric as the binding for the envelope seam instead of the white because i wanted a more seamless look there and less POP "here's the opening right here!" effect.

a bit blurry, but still. dont you wish this was where you slept? so relaxing and tranquil.

tranquility is overrated. toddzilla is not.

a plus quilt

i never thought this day would come. when i decided to undertake making a big boy quilt for judah with awesome fabrics and a fun new design, i was full of the bright-eyed and blushed-cheek optimism that came from finishing layla's quilt top. i was high. high on the delusions of grandeur that come from halfway finishing a project and assuming you are now an expert (like when i ran for 10 minutes straight for the first time and decided i was the next undiscovered ultra-marathoner).

keep in mind that i had only finished her quilt top and hadnt actually quilted (the part where you sew all three layers: top, bottom and batting together to make the lines on top) anything yet. i didnt know what i was getting into. doing judah's twin-sized quilt was 4 times bigger than laylas crib quilt. it was a quadro-beast.

i had everything cut up back in may, and i just finished on monday. this thing lurched forward in about 3 or 4 fits and starts, in hours-long bursts of motivations followed by months of nothing.

but it is DONE and it feels SO good. i'm far from good (or even decent) at this stuff yet, but hey, functional blanket. rah rah!

wheeeeeeeeee!

i let judah pick the solid color for the binding and he went with blue. its had to be a color that was in the front and back fabrics and it was between this and the red or orange in the backing material. i'm not drunkenly crazy about this and might have preferred a bolder color for more contrast, but still, feast your eyes on that sexy mitered corner!

this is my favorite neighborhood of castlandia.

and the yellow pennants are my favorite fabric.

hello, wind gust. thank you for your approval of my quilt and opportunity to be artsy camera lady.

the back is funny. i didnt order enough fabric for the whole back and i was too cheap and impatient to order more so i just used some plain black yardage (from clearance sheets!) to frame either side--albeit somewhat drunkenly if you look at the edges. i actually really like it with all the black because this was the only pattern with black in it and it makes it look like those are the wall or boundaries of the kingdom. there be monsters out there.

i went with a really basic quilting pattern of just echoing the horizontal and vertical seam lines on either side. simple, easy, forgiving. still took forever.

and of course there were some classic keight boners. i must have been on a bender when i cut this section because that one plus is so whack. and because i was so young and stupid back when i started this quilt, i didnt notice or try to fix it when i sewed it in. so the poor noble steed is really stepping in my pile of mess.

and i dont even know what happened here. i pinned like crazy before quilting to keep everything aligned and smooth, but things got a little, um italicized up in that middle area. saucy, booty-shaking pluses!

i had been telling judah about his "special castle blanket" forever now, and showing him the scenes on the fabric as the quilt came together. he has never really seemed too interested beyond telling me which castle we all live in or pointing out the horsies.

but for some reason, when i had the whole thing on my sewing table and was sending it all through my machine, he was smitten. he came up and said, "dis my cashul blankie, mommy?" and i would say, "yes! it is. i made it just for you." and he would lay down and put his face on it and say, "i WUV it!" which i have never heard him say about any object before ever. that was like rocket fuel in my motivation tank to finish it so he could take this baby to snuggle town.

when i finally presented it to him, he was in pre-nap meltdown mode so it wasnt the idyllic scene i had imagined (me and him in a flowery meadow identifying cloud shapes while laying on the quilt. his flaxen locks fluttering adorably in the wind; my boobs suddenly restored to the pre-nursing glory). instead he mostly just freaked out and said he wanted chocolate instead.

but after nap time he was all about it again:

prince judah the I. in his courtly robes looking ever so regal...next to the trashcan

one unforeseen snag: i made this a twin sized comforter in the hopes that it would go on his twin bed ONE DAY, and until then would be a fort/picnic/play blanket. jesse thinks i am a moron for not realizing that of course he would want this as his main sleeping blanket (replacing the blanket my aunt made him which i adore and which was inseparable from him until this moment). this baby clashes fantastically with everything else in his star room and is huge on his toddler bed. but, look at that kid, how can i say no? he's the prince of peeps (castle peeps is the name of the fabric line...get it? oy).

*the tutorial i used for the quilt top is here (i had already picked out this fabric line and just happened to love this quilt pattern in the exact same fabrics...perfect!). the tutorial i always use for binding is here.

layla's quilt!

how about the finished product of a project i started last april and finished in november and then never posted about? i figure if anyone is first in line for an overdue post, it's this guy.

in november, you may have noticed that the background of layla's birthday picture was her quilt. the one i started ages ago, butchered on my first attempt at quilting it, and finally set aside for a good 6 months.

well, i finished it! yup, that background was more than just the quilt top (which i had used as a photo prop before); its a full-fledged blanket extraordinaire. my first ever quilt! it is far from perfect, but i we are so in love with it.

after i finally seam-ripped all the awful original quilting lines (an entire night's work) it was much easier to get motivated and make some forward progress. i wrapped it up a few days before layla's birthday and we have been loving it ever since.

sometimes, i snuggle with it if she isnt using it.

in the dawn's early light: there she is.

i basted it correctly this time with actual safety pins which made a huge difference, though my choice of quilting pattern was just as stupid this time (drunken digital spirals!), it looked better and didnt have much of the nasty bunching that my first attempt was soiled with.

drunken spiral quilting pattern-do not attempt

i made the binding myself and hand-stitched it on. i had made fun of raechel in the past for saying how much she loved hand-binding quilts, but i swiftly ate my words when i first sat down to do mine and found myself falling in love with the rhythmic, exact, inching progress of this method. lesson one: never doubt the rae-rae; she will make you a believer.

i mitered that corner like a playa!

i backed the quilt with one of my favorite fabrics from this collection.

it has a slight swelling protuberance going on over at 3 oclock, but we love it still

and i used printable fabric and added a built-in security precaution in case we ever get separated from this treasured item. it might not stop it from getting picked up by someone else (swiper, no swiping!), but hopefully it would unleash enough guilt to impel them to turn it in or contact us.

security blanket, indeed. (i didnt think of doing this until after the blanket was done, so i had to hand sew it on so the stitches wouldnt show on the front, and i went a little overboard with my embroidery floss. too flossy flossy.)

and lest you forget, here are the cool details of where this project started for me:

raechel was the source of my original inspiration for the quilt. she made her sweet daughter, hazel, one first after she was inspired by the designer of this fabric, ann maria horner, who made one for her son. shwew. that's a hefty amount of inspirational trickle down.

but that means there are at least 3 of these log-cabin style baby quilts out there making little toddlers and their sewing-mamas very happy.

this fabric collection is called "good folks." it is out of print and of the 24 fabrics that comprise the set, over half of them are really REALLY hard to find. raechel was key and SO sweetly gave me 3 or 4 of the really rare ones that she had left over from hazel's quilt. "greater love have no woman than would lay down her out of print designer scraps for her sister" -the bible of sewing.

a few of the rarest ones i actually tracked down by searching etsy for products that were made from these fabrics and then begging scraps form their makers. so many ladies just GAVE me their leftover pieces of these amazing fabrics for no charge or for so cheap. i heart the sewing community. (one lady actually said, "oh yeah, i was using that for serging practice, you can have it!" i about fainted over the prospect of using this awesome fabric as scrap fabric for serging! ack! yes, i burn twenty dollar bills for fire readiness drills sometimes too).

2 fabrics came from england, several from canada and one fabric i actually got by buying pillow covers made from the fabric i needed and then deconstructing them into yardage myself. girl's gotta do...

so now the quilt is finished and i actually have lots of leftover fabric from this collection since i had to buy many of the prints in full yard quantities. so i have declared this "layla's official fabric collection. what, your baby doesnt have an official fabric line? i might not have a clue what he birthstone is, but i guarantee this fabric is prettier.

pretty pretties before their first washing (which is what gives it that nice stippling effect that quilts are known for)

after the first wash

and the reason for the whole thing:

to see miss stinkerbell wrapped up in her coat quilt of many colors.

a little nervous about the general public possibly swiping her beloved.

reassured that they shant ever be parted thanks to my security measures.

the satisfaction we have gotten from the finished product of this project has been so much more gratifying than i expected. i have made really pretty, useful things before, but something about a cozy blanket (that will hopefully be around for a really long time) made by hand for your babes is really extra special.

high on the accomplishment of this first quilt, i am now in the middle of 2 more. expect recaps about their completion sometime in 2014.