A Quilt for Baby Andrew

This quilt belongs to a little guy named Andrew who was born on the 15th of July! He gets to start his life in the sweetest nautical themed nursery. I had been wanting to make a quilt for him, and when I saw the nautical theme, an idea came to mind for this herringbone style quilt. I had navy and white fabric on hand from another project, and was able to jump right in and make big half-square triangles to piece together a crib sized quilt. I had some fabric in mind for the back, but when I went to Jo-Ann's to pick out polka dots for the binding, I saw this darling whale fabric and it was kismet. You can click on the photo to see it up close, it's so cute!

 

In these colors, the boldness of the pattern reminds me a little bit of boating flags, and the interlocking nature of it reminds me of the knots associated with nautical things. Can you tell I don't know much about being on the water!? Most of my nautical reference comes from my one time on a sailboat, going on a cruise, and whatever my husband tells me about Deadliest Catch or Shark Week. 

 

I really like the look of the thick binding on the back. This is the first time I've done that. I thought it would be nice to be able to machine stitch the binding down on the long sides, and have that line of stitching double as the last line of quilting on the front of the quilt. I hand sewed the top, bottom, and miters of the binding since I didn't want a line of quilting running perpendicular to all of that parallel quilting.

My friend sent me this photo last week, aren't these kiddos darling!! Andrew is already so good at sharing!

A Quilt for Emmalyn & Hope

This quilt had quite an adventure before it was delivered to the little girls who call it their own. Before darling baby Emmalyn was born (2010), her mom, another dear friend and I picked out the Pickle Dish pattern from Kaffe Fassett's book called Quilt Romance. We were certainly romanced by the pattern on the cover and spent hours together at Joann's picking out just the right fabric.

I ended up working on it during a span of four years, in three different states! It started out in Florida, made its way to Missouri, and finally was finished Oregon before returning to its home in Florida. By that time Emmalyn's sweet baby sister, Hope, had been born (2012), so it became a quilt for two!

Ollie had a lot of fun with this one, and is probably still looking for it around the house!

 

It was so satisfying to see this through! I remembered to post these pictures because the little ladies have a baby brother who just recently made his debut into the world. He has a quilt headed his way in the mail, and I will share pics of that next week!

A Quilt for Baby Sam

My friend Wendy had her second baby, a son named Sam, a little over a month ago! When Sam's big sister was born, Wendy and I worked on a quilt idea together. This time around, I saw some fabric that just felt right and went for it without spilling the beans. Part of the reason for the secrecy was to go easy on myself just in case I didn't finish it in time! Keeping my lips sealed must be the trick, because I finished it about a week before Sam was born!

My favorite helper, Ollie, is modeling the lovely fabric by Skinny la Minx. It's called Up Up & Away and was designed for Cloud9 Fabrics. I have some triangles left, and while I don't have a baby to swaddle, I think our new printer might be in need of special attention by way of a quilted cover of sorts!

The back of the quilt features Passing Clouds in gold by Eloise Renouf from her Bark & Branch line for Cloud 9 Fabrics. I bought all of the fabric for this quilt from Lima Sews, a Portland Etsy seller.

Happy Birthday, Sam!

Pickle Dish Progress

I'm working on a pickle dish quilt for Sarah's baby Emmalyn. It's my first time trying paper piecing and I love it!

I'm following the pattern from Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Romance book, but we picked out a different color scheme that will match Emma's nursery. Almost all of these pieces are finished now, so I'll have Sarah and baby come over soon to help me arrange all of the pieces!

A Week of Celebrations!

 This beauty is named Emmalyn and Josh and I got to meet her at the hospital before she was even a day old! Our friend Sarah had her baby in the wee hours of Monday morning. I had never seen a baby so new to the world and I felt so lucky to be there. I spent a couple of great hours with Sarah, her mom, and the baby on Friday - just amazing! Congrats Sarah & Jason, let me know and I'll come over any time your arms are tired! 

 

On Friday night, Josh and I headed over to Winter Park to have dinner at Dexter's before stopping by the Rifle Paper Co. grand opening party open house. We were there right at the beginning, which I think was perfect, because we really got to take everything in, and to talk to Anna for a little while. I didn't think to have Josh take an iphone photo, but Becka & Nate of Studio 222 were snapping away before we got there, so I'm sure there will be plenty of lovely photos to see. Above is a photo of Anna & Lisa mid-transaction at the old Rifle location last year. Anna's twitpic gives an idea of how wonderful the space looks. It's just perfect, and I'm looking forward to going back during regular hours to make a purchase or two! Congrats Anna & Nathan!

My mom's birthday is today! Happy Birthday Mom! She thoughtfully called my brother and me to let us know that she didn't need any presents, and a card would be perfectly lovely. Little did she remember that I had taken her little falling-apart address book when we were together last, with the promise of repairing it for her b-day. Something small like that needed some fun packaging, so I put it into the Longaberger basket that I found at Goodwill for a whopping quarter! 

'Tis the season! It's almost time for stocking stuffers, so I pulled out a bunch of books that had gotten really cozy on their shelves and I put them in the Sale section of the shop.

And the celebrations just continue! Spice cake is in order as soon as our schedule aligns with our friend Wyatt, whose birthday wasn't too long ago. And we're off to Ohio for Thanksgiving this week. Can't wait!

And here's to you! Hope you have a celebratory kind of day!