Baby J Quilt

So a couple weeks ago I threw up this pic just to tease you and let you know I hadn't dropped off the face of the planet:

Lovely pretty fabrics to be made into a warm, soft quilt to welcome my best friend's snuggly little girl into the world! Oh, is she sweet! :) Baby J was born just a week ago, and we got to go visit the fresh little one and her parents last week! 

April is my oldest friend... we've been friends literally since birth, sooooo... what are we at, 27.5 ish years of friendship? That's intense. It's weird that we have kids now. It's so much fun to see our kids playing together, as we sit off the the side and talk and giggle. I don't know when we grew up-- it seems like we should still be the little kids playing on the floor. 

Anyway, this is April's second baby girl, and carrying on a Sass family tradition, every new baby in the family (and April is pretty much family to me) gets a quilt. (You may recall I made this quilt when her first baby girl was born).

 For this quilt I pieced 10x10 blocks or ivory and chocolate dot minky. The backing was  a sweet bicycle flannel print in ivory, chocolate, turquoise, orange, and pink. I loved the print because it was sweet and girly, without being over the top or sickeningly 'baby'. (April and I agree-- we are not a huge fan of 'babyish baby stuff'.)

I 'embroidered' a j in the corner of the backing to personalize it with some chunky pink yarn. I used the same yarn to tie the blanket-- even though I went ahead and 'quilted' it stitch-in-the-ditch style around those big minky blocks.

I used a double layer of extra-loft organic cotton batting so it is extra pillow-y and soft.

The quilt is bound with a turquoise satin binding-- with those mitered corners that always give me fits!

I really liked the way it turned out! I think it is cute and fun, and extra soft. Perfect for a cute, fun, soft new baby J! I think (hope?) April liked it too... she saw it and said-- oh I saw the fabric on your blog the other day and I was hoping it was for us! I'm glad we have a similar asthetic.

Here is my friend (looking fab just a few days after giving birth!) and me holding sweet baby girl. (Don't you think I look good holding a baby draped in pink? We should try for a pink one next time...) Love you and your sweet family, April! Congrats on another beautiful baby girl! Welcome to the world, baby J!

Sam's Quilt

Well, you have already seen glimpses of the finished product (here) but I thought I'd give you a little more detail on Sam's quilt.
I started this quilt in September during the Pinterest Challenge. Here I found the instructions to make a quilt top, and I completed it! Yay!

But after completing the quilt top... I hemmed and hawed and spent a long time trying to decide what to back it with. After much deliberation I decided on a fabric-- the same fabric I covered the changing pad with. I went back to the store to purchase more... and they didn't have it anymore. AUGH! I searched for something else for a few more weeks, and couldn't find anything else I liked as well, so I broke down and ordered the fabric online.

Sooo... This quilt is 'crib size' which turns out is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. When I went to put the back on I all of a sudden realized there would have to be a seam... ugh. I didn't want a seam down the back. I didn't know how to match up the pattern... ugh. So I came up with this solution... I had a bunch of scraps that had been trimmed off the blocks that made the front. I pieced together a strip of irregularly shaped black and white blocks and used that accross the "seam" on the back side. Yay. Crisis averted.
Next I laid it all out and pinned the layers together. (I used an organic cotton quilt batting, already cut to crib size) Then it was time to start quilting. After some deliberation on that subject I decided to just 'stitch in the ditch' along the chevrons with white thread.

...and it took forever. As I have found quilting usually does. sigh. At first I was all... oh, yay, I'm making a quilt for my baby, isn't this lovely and stress releiving. Then it got down to those last weeks before the baby came and I was all I'm ready to be done with this. ALLLLLL of this.  But I DID complete the quilting before Sam got here.

All that was left to be done was to trim the edges and bind the quilt. Which really should not have taken as long as it did to accomplish. But I was indecisive again... and couldn't decide upon a binding fabric (pattern or no? Do I use a solid color? Something already used in the quilt? Just black?) Soooo... I kept putting it off and then!
I had a baby.
So I am just going to point out that it would be a few weeks before I would care about a quilt again. Mmm... okay.
It actually took me four weeks to get back to it after Sam was born. And I bought some green fabric to bind the quilt and got it all home and started it, and decided I didn't like it. SIGH.  So I ran to The Lob one night late while my husband was watching the boy... and bought some black fabric. I gritted my teeth and said URRGH! This must get done!
I used this tutorial to create my binding. I sewed the strips on the back side first...

Then flipped it and sewed down the front with my machine... if I were hardcore I would have hand finished my binding... but I was not that hardcore at this point. Either that, or I don't love my son that much. Yeah, one of those two.

Anywho... I finished it!

 And I love the way it turned out. I presented it to Samuel when he was four weeks old. He snuggled and studied it, and cooed his approval. Which made mama feel good. (Yes, my self esteem is wrapped up in my infant's approval. Don't judge me.)



(Those of you super observant might notice that we got a new fence between quilt top and quilt completion. Don't you like our new fence? It's pretty! Also... the snow you see on the ground there is the total amount of snow we have had so far this season. We were pretty much snowed in for days. It was dramatic.)

See... the new quilt is just a great place to stretch out and take an afternoon nap... mmmm... nap time. (Don't you just love those chubby baby legs? Ahhh! I could just eat him up!)

A Peek

If you were to peek in my sewing room tonight... 

You would see this

 (Because I am desperately working to finish this thing before baby comes... I have a little over a month, I know, but time is dwindling dramatically right now for me.)

And you would hear this:

(Because had it looping over and over for close to an hour... I like the chill vibe of this song and find it really relaxing... and at this point with anxieties multiplying, I can use any little bit of 'relax' I can get.)

And you might also witness a pregnant lady finishing the 'quilting' portion of this quilt and doing a little pregnant happy dance... which may or may not look a lot like throwing her arms in the air in victory and then falling on the bed in exhaustion.

Pinterest Challenge: Project #3

This is... sort of an incomplete project.
It all started with my chevron rug obsession for Baby P's room. When I decided a rug would be too much for his room... and I saw this on pinterest:

Source: beesquarefabrics.blogspot.com via Valerie on Pinterest

I knew what to do. I was going to make a chevron quilt for my baby. But I wanted it black and white. Can you make a black and white baby quilt? Grandma Sass would say adamantly, NO. But I say... why not? Aren't babies supposed to be stimulated by black and white patterns or something?
Yeah, I've totally been reading my baby books, can you tell? Someone is a prepared mama.
But back to the quilt... I tried to figure out if straight black and white would be too boring? (it would.)
I didn't want to add a lot of color/print (mostly because I didn't want to pick something out, and i wanted high contrast) but when I was at the fabric store I found this white on white print with different size dots on it... they looked like bubbles, I loved it... but they didn't have enough of it, AND it was stained on top of that. UGH. So I settled for a small white on white dot print that was similar. I bought my black and I was ready to go.

I have to admit, this project made me really nervous. Even though I have a couple baby quilts under my belt, the only time I have pieced together a quilt top like this was with my grandma, who passed away almost two years ago now. I was a little bit scared about my skill level in completing the process... but also about my emotional level. It took me a few days to power through it, I am not going to lie, I stopped for a cry break once or twice (but that could also be prego hormone related, who knows?). But I had Granny's cutting mat and quilt square/ruler things... so I felt confident. :)
Once I was home and cutting a million little squares I was all, "Meh, this is boring" UGH. Too much little dot going on, needed more interest. So I went to a DIFFERENT fabric store where I found some large white on white polka dots. Perfect!

 So here are all 126 blocks cut out and stacked up ready to be laid out. I laid it out across the bed in the basement/spare bedroom. It was bigger than I thought it would be. My husband came home and said, whoa did you mean for it to be that big? My mom came over and said, whoa, did you mean for it to be that big? No... I guess I didn't know how big it would be. The pattern said crib size which I was assuming was the yard-point-five-ish size blankets my grandma always made, but I guess crib size is 45x60 in case you were wondering and that's big.

My mom came over for our weekly date, and she quilted away on her Baby P quilt, and I worked on mine. Oh, man, I love my serger. I was flying through this thing. I don't know what the official stance is for quilters and sergers vs. sewing... but the serger was awesome and FAST. And I am all for awesome and fast. Plus, Granny made all her quilts with a serger... so if I am doing it wrong, I'm doing it wrong like Grandma! (And I am totally okay with that.)

Then, because this was done on point, I had all these little triangles to trim off the edges. (And the trimmed portions were just like bunting, Erin, you would have been so excited! :) haha) And my mom insisted on including me in the pic, because she is all... you will want pictures of you working on your baby's quilt someday for the memories, and I am all... but won't I have the quilt for the memories? Anyway, here's a pic of good ol' prego me cutting away. Yay. (and please try to ignore the unmade bed-- it was holding the quilt pieces-- and the laundry in the background.)

And... then I had a quilt top! Which is as far as this post is going to take you, because that's as far as my pinterest inspiration/tutorial took me.

Here's a close up so you can see the different dot patterns (and not judge my 'slightly off' row there toward the top... or the fact that it's kinda wrinkly, but, hey once it's quilted you want it to wrinkle anyhow, right?)

Soooooo... now all I have to do is figure out how I want to quilt the thing (anyone experienced have suggestions? I don't think I want to do stippling... I am still undecided about what to do.)

Anywho... there is the top for Baby P's Chevron quilt from Mama! I will, of course, post pictures when it is fully complete.

Pinterest Challenge #3? Check!

And be sure to check out the rest of the Pinterest Challenge projects and Amy Lee, Erin, Jessica and Stacia... some of them I have featured, some of them just keep posting more and more great stuff on their blogs! Awesome, no?

Energy and Plans and Questions

Trimester 1 = UGH.
But I have had some hopeful moments this past week that help me see the light at the end of this dark first trimester tunnel. I've been a bit more energetic this week, feeling good more than I felt nauseous, and I even made dinner twice!
PLUS I finally completed the baby gift which will soon be headed to friends in Korea... AND! I began Baby P quilt #1. This one is for Grandma P. Grandma S has yet to decide upon a fabric, and so her's will be 2nd. Yes, I am pregnant and trying to pump out 2 baby quilts for my child's grandmothers. Why? I don't know. I cave easily under pressure. Or I like to take on more than I can handle. Or I am a people pleaser to a fault.
One or all of those.
But the Grandmas requested baby quilts and who am I to say no, or set healthy boundaries and expectations of myself. You see? I really had no choice.
The good news is I am finally feeling some motivation and inspiration... and I hope that lasts. I am a little afraid it might wane as quickly as it developed and I will be left with a pile of incomplete projects and subsequent guilt, but we will cross that bridge when we get there. Right?
Right.
In the mean time...


Photo source: E Tells Tales

I saw this nursery today, and swooned a little. Clean, simple, lovely, interesting, fun... and the wiener dog night light on the floor? Could you just die? I wouldn't be able to help myself, I just might gank him for my own room!
I've started thinking a little bit about nursery design. We went shopping this weekend and Grandpa and Grandma S bought Baby P a crib (ooh... add that to the list of reasons Grandma's get quilts). It's a pretty simple and solid design, espresso wood finish. To save us some money (well, maybe...) we are using my childhood dresser and bureau that currently resides in our spare bedroom (soon to be nursery). The only problem is... that stuff while still solid is a little banged up and janky looking, and it's not real wood. Also it it light oak.

Photo source: Nebraska Furniture Mart
This is the crib we ordered... in the 'sienna' finish, ours is 'espresso' finish

SO!
The plan is to paint a close enough match... so everything is pretty and matching-ish. I am also counting on that second trimester energy boost to get me through this project. And some nice weather. (Cross your fingers for me, okay?)
But I do have some questions about painting furniture, as this will be my first time.
For all you purists... it's fake wood, so I am not destroying heirlooms or anything.  My plan is to paint a dark chocolate brown (maybe darker...) and then use an espresso or even black glaze to give it some depth and dimension. But here's my question, because google research has yet to answer it: After painting fake wood-- can you glaze it? Will the glaze stick to anything if there is no wood grain or bumps or divots to settle into? Will it look good or will it just be a waste of my time-- in which case I should just paint it a flat color of paint and call it a day???
Thoughts? Comments? Tips? Advice?

Baby Blanket

A couple weeks ago I gave you a sneak peek of 2 quilts i was working on. You already saw the Tractor Quilt, and here is the second one.

This quilt was made for a very special little girl. My friend of 25 years (yes, do the math-- since we were born) just had her very first baby girl on March 7. When she first told me she was pregnant I was shocked (She had only been married 2 weeks-- who does that?!?!) but then I got pretty excited. I knew i had to get the wheels turning for a special gift for this baby. I really wanted to make a quilt like my grandma used to... but I didn't know if I wanted to make one JUST like grandma made hers... 

Right about that time I stumbled across THIS tutorial and also THIS one showing the same technique for how t make a faux chenille effect... i was intrigued. So I decided to try it. I asked my friend what kinds of colors she was going with and she said green... Uh... for her baby girl? I didn't want green. But I went on a search for something girly with green... sigh.

Then when shopping with a friend I found this GORGEOUS Alexander Henry Fabric (2D Zoo in Nude) and fell in love... the peachy pink animals and pretty celery and mint green colors... I'm in. The more I worked with the fabric the more I loved it. Those little animals just kill me! So charming.

Anyway, I chose a peachy pink, white, and green flannel for the back, and went to work quilting. Not particularly hard, but time consuming. If I had a walking foot it would have been easier working with 4 layers of fabric. I spread it out over a couple of days, but it took me about 4 hrs to do all the quilting.

Then I start cutting (and I didn't take any pics of this part of the process, sorry...) also not really hard, but time consuming. If I had purchased one of THESE it could have gone much faster. After the cutting I trimmed the edges and put it in the washer. This is after just one wash it frayed quite a bit and was nice and fluffy and textury. I hear it only gets softer the more you wash it... which only means good things for baby S.
I bound the blanket with white satin binding... nice a simple, and I was pretty darn proud of the mitered corners... those things are just a beast for me.

I am very happy with the way it turned out. I took it to see my friend and Baby S in the hospital the day after she was born and Mama and baby approved. :) It really was a lovely quilt. I had fun making it too. I think there will be more.

Actually, my mom just loved it. When she saw it she gasped and said-- when I finally get grand babies someday (she gives me a stern look) you are going to make one of these for me too, right?
Wait-- I have to supply the grandchild and the blanket? That hardly seems fair.

Made With Love

My grandma was the sweetest, most loving, giving, and funny old lady you will ever meet. She is my hero. This picture was taken of us just a few weeks before she died. It's the last picture I have of me and my sweet Granny.

Granny is my hero. If I can be half the woman she is... sigh I miss her more than I can say.
Anyway, Grandma was a quilter. She made (literally) thousands of blankets in her life time for her family and friends, but mostly she made baby quilts that she donated to an organization called Warm Hearts, Warm Babies who gave baby blankets to shelters, crisis pregnancy centers, and foster children. Especially in her later years when she was not working, she sewed baby blankets all day long turning out several a week. She loved the work, but did it also as a service of love. Also, Granny was completely blind the last several years she was alive. It didn't slow her down one bit. Think of the thousands of babies wrapped in the blankets she lovingly made... what a legacy.
When Grandma was in the hospital before she passed away she kept talking about getting home, because she had two quilts to finish and get sent off. Grandma never finished those two quilts, but when we were cleaning out her house after she passed, we found the incomplete quilts.

My dad picked up one of those baby quilts that had tractors on it. He loved it. He started pointing out the different kinds of tractors he had as a kid. He loved it. Grandma had the front pieced together and the batting and backing pinned to it, ready to go. It just needed to be tied (Granny tied all her quilts with yarn. She technically didn't do any 'quilting' so some might argue they are not technically 'quilts' but whatever...) and needed the binding sewn on.
I made sure the unfinished quilts came home from CO with me.
It took me almost a year before I could bring myself to pull them out, but I decided my dad needed to have this last quilt-- the Tractor quilt that his mom started and didn't get a chance to finish.

I started the project, and I have to be honest-- more than once I had to put it down for a few days to compose myself. I couldn't exactly remember the stitch she did to hand sew the binding on. I was devastated. I knew I could figure it out, but I wanted to do it exactly like Granny did it.
The quilt turned out beautiful. If you are looking closely at her work... in that first picture you may notice that her rows were off-- sometimes by about 1/4 inch. And in the second photo... around the middle there are two blocks out of place that don't fit the pattern. Granny was very sick and very blind when she stitched this last blanket together... but I think these little 'errors' are just a trademark of her dedication to her mission to love and serve. She wasn't going to let anything stand in her way.

Not that I doubted my dad would know the origins of this very special blanket, but I wanted to up the 'keepsake value' of the quilt and so I hand embroidered a patch that I attached to the back bottom corner.
It said: made with Love by MOM, January 2010 (when grandma passed)
And 'Made with Love' is more than just a cute tag-- but the truth. Everything Grandma did she did with love. Love for God, love for her family, and love for babies she would never meet but would be blessed by one of her beautiful quilts.

This special quilt, once completed was a birthday gift for my dad. He opened the box and immediately knew what he was gazing upon. "My tractor quilt!" he said. He loved it. He snuggled it all evening. It sits on the back of his recliner at home.
It's nice to see it when i go to my parents house. It's a lovely keepsake and reminder of my Grandma, and how much she Loved.