heart quilt

My sister Donna will soon be a grandmother, so I got busy on this cute little quilt I found through Pinterest. I started out with a 45 x 60 inch piece of white cotton and starting appliqueing hearts on it.

I tried to keep the colors together (pinks, greens, blues) and found I have plenty to choice from in my scrap collection.

I embroidered her name in the middle.

Then did a cute pink 1 1/2 inch border. The multicolor fabric I though was super cute! I made that 5 inches wide and added it.

I quilted it this swirly pattern. And as always, I marked the back with my name and date created. Since the front was a white, I did the back in a light gray trying to keep it on the contemporary side.

I got the idea from here. I modified her design - but looking back, I do like her's better. Next time, I'll do the squares and put them together instead of using one big sheet.

It looks ok - but the hearts needed to be bigger.

I bound it with a bright yellow fabric and hand stitched it down.

I sent it off to Kentucky with a few other goodies. My sister and niece were delighted to receive it in time for the shower.

They actually hung it on the wall behind the new mom as decoration during the shower.

sweetwater

To date, I think this is my favorite quilt. I made it for my son's birthday last year. It was also my first quilt using my new Brother PQ1500S. It took me about a month of weekends to complete it, including the quilting.

I love the colors. When I picked out the fabrics, I thought of circuity colors. My son is a fellow technology geek and likes the color black. I choose the green to compliment it. I really like the black with the words written on it. It's just random words in different languages. I found it at Joann Fabric.

I choose the pattern sweetwater listed in the quilt pattern book by Fons and Porter. The pattern was designed by Debbie Outlaw who works for Moda Fabric, and it was easy to follow along.

I always embroider the name of the person the quilt was meant for.

I completed the quilt well before his birthday and thought I would paint something to go with it.

So I choose a misty forest type of scene. Acrylics painting - Green and black. If you look close, you'll see slender man behind one of the trees. Also, is the heart of some poor animal hanging from a branch. Holly and Jason talked me into doing that.

I also had enough scraps left over so I made the little throw pillow to match. It's zippered so it can be removed and washed.

I think you can see the quilting here. I just did loops. The quilting alone took me about a weekend. It was fun doing free motion quilting for the first time. Getting used to the movement of the needle. I was able to do a Queen size quilt on my Brother with no trouble.

Happy 24th birthday son!

the giggle box turns 30.

My daughter Jacquelyn just celebrated her 30th anniversary. An amazing feat considering I was only 5 when I had her. :) Ok, that's creepy - I found out I was pregnant with Jacquelyn on my 21st birthday.  She was such a happy, giggly baby - that I always called her "giggle box".

Stacy and Jackie are besties. Jackie graduates this December from University of Michigan and Stacy graduated last December. Their birthdays are just days apart, so we had a birthday brunch for them this Sunday. Jac has a gluten allergy, so everything is gluten free. Pancakes, cookies, muffins .... good stuff.

For months I had been hearing about how everyone has a quilt but Jackie. "Mom, even the guy you work with gets a quilt for his newborn!" she whines. I knew she had a big birthday coming up and now was the time to make it extra special.

King size quilts are not easy to quilt without a long arm machine. I started out wanting to make a double ring quilt for her. I found this video which is a quilt as you go for double wedding ring quilt here. I was very excited about it and went to my nearest Joann's Fabrics to get a template. I started working on it and realized that my measurements were all off. That the template I had did not work how I wanted it to. After messing up several times and wasting a whole day and a yard of nice expensive premium fabric, I abandoned the idea.

Because it is a King quilt, I needed to go with a "quilt as you go" version and I found this video. This allowed me have a reversible quilt and to be able to quilt each block at a time. To give it some more depth, I created some double blocks.

The whole thing took me about 2 months to make and every block is done with free motion quilting techniques. It was nice to not have a huge quilt to push through the machine - doing just a block at a time. I believe there was 89 blocks in all.

And I took the opportunity to embroider some of the blocks with endearing sentiments with her name, date and even embroidered some peacock feathers in it. Peacocks are her favorites and I was super excited to find some peacock fabric.

The thing I love the most about it is that it is reversible - once side is brown tones with her beloved peacocks and the other is more modern with black, blue and a smidgen of red.

life represented

My daughter Jenny called me on the phone. You know it's an emergency when the phone rings. No one uses the phone anymore, to make phone calls. I pick up the phone. "Jen?" Dead silence. "Jennnnnnnny" Dead silence. Great! I was butt dialed!

Then I heard it .... a small muffled cry that increasingly grew louder. "Mom? There's something wrong, they are sending me to the hospital by ambulance."

Jenny was 6 weeks from her due date. I immediately left work and met the ambulance at the hospital where her and Bobby were. I had been fighting back tears the whole way. The tears were trying to give way to sheer panic. Nope, it's won't do anyone any good to do that, so I talked myself back off the ledge. They admitted her into the hospital.

I spent the night in the hospital with her and during the night hard labor began. Matthew was born the next morning ...... healthy. A mere 5 pounds, 2 ounces. Everyone was fine. They both were in the hospital for a week.

Isn't he adorable? We planned to have a small family get together after they left the hospital, so I got to work on the quilt. After much deliberation, I finally decided on the design above. It's life represented. Yea ... life represented.

The top part is the sky and clouds. The bottom is grass, a stream and more grass. I even embroidered some fish swimming in the stream. The stuff in between is horizon with bicycles and sports. I used my Brother PQ-1500 quilting machine, which is awesome. Cool and fun.

Darn! All the pictures I took of the quilt, I had folded it in half. It is a standard size crib quilt. I used a method I found here. The method shown here is more curvy - but I figured out how to do uneven lines. You can see better towards the bottom with the greens and browns. Nifty stuff.

The whole thing took about a day to make and now it cuddles a young guy most precious.

the sports nut

Aunt Dottie had a Singer sewing machine in her bedroom and I would sit in there and watch her put together pieces of fabric. It was amazing to see her put those puzzles together. The last time I saw her at her sewing machine, she was sewing her daughters wedding dress. How wonderful would it be . .. to pass down to the younger generations something you made.

My daughter Jenny has 2 boys. Bobby wanted a quilt for his birthday - he turned 11 this year. Many times you will find him in my sewing room looking to make some little thing. "Nana, can I sew something?" I taught him how to use my sewing machine about a year ago and he loves playing with it.

He's also a real sports nut - baseball, hockey, basketball, football, bowling - does it all. Not only does it all, but is super good at it. He recently tried out and made a hardball team and hit a home run in his first game.

So I ended up choosing this pattern but he chose the colors. I found a sports collection backing for it, which also had the number 12 in it. He thought I had put that number 12 on the quilt and was insulted that I didn't realize he was 11. I'm still not sure he understands that the fabric just happened to have 12 on it.

I started with 8 inch squares and I embroidered a few things on it. I quilted it in big triangles too. This quilt fits a full size bed nicely.

I think it turned out pretty good. My little entry level brother embroidery machine sure gets a workout. I hid a couple of words throughout the quilt. I think the embroidery just adds character to the quilt.

Every time I go over to Jenny's house, Bobby has it ... on the couch, in his room and they even took it to the hospital when the new baby was born. Matthew was premature and they stayed at the hospital for a week. It was sweet and very nice to see how it gave both Jenny and Bobby comfort.

If you want to see more about this quilt, I got the idea from In Color Order.