Quin's Quilt

I saw this quilt on pinterest and fell in love. I liked the simplicity and decided to make a version to celebrate a dear friend's new baby girl.  Forgive these pictures - we went to Missouri to meet Baby Quin in early December and I was literally binding the quilt at their house... My goal was to finish it by her October due date..oops! I hadn't taken pictures of it and realized it as we were heading out to the airport on the way home. Edrie thought it was her play mat...

I used the colors of Quin's Nursery - two shades of pink and basic white for the 'gingham' front and did a one piece back with a little embroidery.

The 'welcome' is in a fun font and I like how it kind of hides in the busy dot fabric of the back. 

I quilted it simply about 1/4 inch from the ditch in both directions. We hadn't washed it when I took these pictures, but Lainey said it crinkled up nicely. Sweet darling baby girl - I hope she enjoys this quilt for a long time. We can't wait to see her (and her parents) again!! 

Baby Newton's Quilt

The shower that the onesie invitations were for was held this past weekend. I wanted to make something special to send out for my friend. After lots of humming and hawing I finally settled on making a quilt. Sewing is not my favorite past-time, but I love patchwork baby quilts so I decided to give it a go. 

To make my life easier I decided to use this tutorial and buy charm packs. I am SO glad I went that route. For me, it was probably the only way this quilt was actually completed on time. 

My mom and I did the whole quilt from start to finish the two days we were housebound because of the blizzard. She is SOO good at ironing - I had no idea what a difference good ironing could make in sewing. It was perfect - I would sew and hand it off and she would iron.

I decided to just tie the quilt to avoid my wonky sewing ruining the quilt top. I just used orange embroidery floss and then mom hand sewed the binding on for me. 

Word from the mama-to-be is that she likes it! Can't wait to see Baby Newton playing on it!

mountain baby blanket

i am up past my eyeballs in the middle of finals and one of the few things that brought a smile to my face was seeing this. it is the quilt jenni and i made for the mountain baby blanket project! check out jenni's blog for more pictures and details.

5 more days...and then i am free. (for 4 weeks...)

thank goodness!

quilt squares for collaborative quilt with Jenni for Mountain Baby Blanket Project

it has been such a great week filled with crafting, friends, food, and festivity! only two and a half more weeks of school and then a WHOLE month of this!

wedding quilt

{all photos courtesy of simple beans}

Oh man... did i receive the package of a lifetime last week!! in general getting mail is one of my favorite things. it is one of those simple things that can make your day so much better...

so you might remember that we (i) decided that we wanted our wedding guest book to be a quilt. one of my bridesmaids headed up the project...she designed the quilt, cut all the fabric, and brought it to the wedding. we had all of the guests sign a rectangle of muslin and she took them all home to stitch it all together. she finished it a few weeks ago!

i am IN LOVE! Grant and I hadn't read any of the squares so it was really fun to sit down and read them together. i am so excited to have this to remind us of that day.

for a while there i was getting SO tired of our wedding fabric,... just saw it so much while planning the wedding and i have a TON left so i always am staring at it in the craft room. well...when this arrived all that went away. i am back in love!

jess enlisted the help of our friend, jenni, to help do the actual quilting. didn't she do so great!? she stippled over all the patterned fabrics leaving the signed parts alone so they were easier to read. oh the talent of these women!

thank you both so very much. grant and i will treasure this for the rest of our lives...we truly appreciate it. Jon - you too receive a special thanks... for moral support and fabric input ;-)

baby quilt

my husband was gone at a conference for SIX days. needless to say it was WAY hard to be completely alone for that long, but on the bright side i got a lot of crafting in. i've been slow to take pictures and post, but i'll get things up in the next few days. 

the first thing i worked on and completed was my quilt! its far from perfect, but i am really happy with how it turned out. 

it took me hours and hours to pull out all the stitches from the first time i tried quilting it, but once that was complete i pinned and pinned and pinned. i bought quilting pins and i really like using them over regular safety pins. my lines aren't very straight BUT there are no puckers!! 

i really like how the diagonal lines look. and i'm really glad i didn't try to stipple it - i'm pretty sure that would have been a disaster. 

as you can see the lines aren't all that straight, but it works. 

there is that backing with no puckers!! ok so there was ONE but it got cut off when i squared the quilt off... 

and lastly the binding. i was a little nervous about this because i had heard it was hard, but i actually found it to be quite easy. maybe because i've done mitered corners before??

so that is it! the kit i bought a year ago is finally a quilt! 

PSif you haven't clicked over to kelly mccaleb's shop before - you should! 

archived: quilt top

i spent yesterday afternoon finishing my quilt top. its FAR from perfect, but i am totally ok with that. i'm never going to be a seamstress that is super exact. its just not going to happen so i need to get over that now. above is just after i got all of the rows sewn together.

and then here is with the border. doesn't it look so much different with the border?? all these fabrics together are so sweet.

and here is where i show you the most annoying mistake EVER. in the last row i somehow mixed up the first two squares and didn't notice it until i was taking these pictures after the border was on. i'm way too lazy to pull all those stitches out so they are staying that way - forever taunting me.

on to the quilt sandwich.

i actually did all this and started quilting and it looks HORRIBLE - the back is very puckered. i didn't have enough pins nor did i have a non-carpeted floor to lay it out on. i will be spending the next day or so pulling out HUNDREDS of stitches and trying again. needless to say i got more safety pins....

archived: home free

i took my test today (it went well, thanks for asking...) so i'm taking the afternoon and tomorrow completely off! i'm very VERY excited about it. i will spend my time with a glass of wine and all the goodness pictured!

description (counter clockwise):

my collection of domino (RIP) and weekend decorating magazines

i plan to pour through these and every other online and library decorating source to make plans for paint colors and DIY projects. for what, you ask? our new house! if all goes well we will be home owners next month!! i'm VERY excited to make it our own. it will be on a VERY tight budget, but i think we can make it cute.

yarn and gauge swatch to make this cardigan

super cute, huh?? i'm excited, but nervous about knitting something so big. i've been going to michaels daily with 50% off coupons to buy the yarn. one skein at a time. i know its ridiculous, but i can't imagine spending twice as much just to avoid the daily drive. my husband even came in with me on friday and checked out separately with his own terra cotta yarn - that got me two in one day! now just one more skein tomorrow, and the circular needle on thursday and i'm home free!

beginnings of the second baby shoe

i think you all are right... just make the other one. i'm sure it will knit up pretty quick.

and lastly the quilt top

i am still SO in love with how all these fabrics come together. i got all the squares sewn into rows in quick bits of time between studying - one or two squares here and there. i hope to get all the rows sewn together without too much trouble!

thats what i'm up to the next few days... how about you??

archived: lesson learned

since i'm more pleased with this project and the pictures are prettier. i'm going to share this first.

i've started piecing my kelly mccaleb baby quilt kit! its only been a year since i bought it - i figured it might be time to start it. i dont know what is up with me and baby stuff, but i just loved this kit so i bought it. hopefully we have a little girl some day.

aren't you in LOVE with the fabric that has the sleeping baby?? so sweet.

it took me a long time to decide where all the pieces should go, but i think it like what i ended up with. i'm in love with the random but cohesive look of all these fabrics together. i dont know if i would have been able to pick them and be convinced they would look good. i've sewn the first three rows together and hope to get the whole top together this weekend. should be a great distraction from studying...

in other news...i've been working on the debbie bliss seed stitch baby shoes. i am still drooling over seed stitch. its my new fav. i was really proud of myself while i was making this first one - the pattern is the most complicated i've tried and i did it! i don't even think i pulled out any stitches!

only problem was that i was trying to make the smallest size, 0 to 3 months and as you can see mine is as big as the example in the book! you would think that would have been a clue that somehow mine weren't going to be the intended size. nope. i was totally pleased and ready to seam them up.

that is when i realized... i should have checked the gauge. i convinced myself i didn't have to because i wasn't going to buy special yarn for this project and all i had on hand was 100% cotton.

poor choice. they are huge! like they would fit a 3 or 4 year old. i'm annoyed because in the book doesn't specify the weight of the yarn they are using just the kind of debbie bliss yarn they used - a ploy to get you to buy her yarn. i know if i had checked the gauge i would have overcome that, but really! how annoying!

i'm struggling with whether i should make the other one. the idea of the shoe is cute and it probably would be cute if it were tiny, but i'm not loving these big ones - the seams are lumpy.... what do you think? make the other one or not??

i also thought i'd share that i made my own center pull ball . aren't you impressed?? for some reason i was so tickled that i could do this! i don't know why but knitting from a ball is so much better than knitting from a skein or hank, don't you think?