Archive for April, 2009

Here’s what I’m up to now…

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

So, after thinking for quite a while about what to do for my second boy baby quilt for early June, I was finally struck with inspiration. My idea was to do sort of a combination of these two quilt patterns from Quiltmaker:

The one on the left is Turtle Twirl from the September/October ’08 issue, and the one on the right is Rickrack Regatta from the most recent (May/June ’09) issue.

I have this cute sailboat fabric, which I got on sale ages ago, which I thought would be great in place of the turtle print.

So, I changed the turtle to the sailboat from Rickrack Regatta (and added a second sail) here:

Then, I made the checkerboard part white and red:

So far, I’m very pleased with how it’s turning out. The next step is to attach the sailboat print borders. More to come when that’s done…

Latest Baby Quilt Top and Accessory

Saturday, April 18th, 2009


Here’s what I’ve been up to most recently: a baby quilt for friends of ours who are expecting their second boy in early June. Their older son turned 2 in January and loves trucks (who doesn’t?), so I made him a matching pillowcase. The theme fabric was given to me a while ago by Marty.

Now I’m looking for inspiration for another boy baby quilt for other friends of ours who are also expecting a boy in early June!

Last Projects (for now at least)

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

Howdy all! Been a while since I’ve posted, eh? Well, here are a couple of Finished Objects that are floating around our house these days. First off, we have a blatant ripoff of a project that Rebecca did last fall. Remember when I went to the craft store and came home with yarn and needles? Well, this is what happened:

This was intended as a Christmas present for Chris, but that didn’t exactly work out. And now we’re almost into the time of year when it won’t be necessary (except for the snow that’s forecast for next week….) so I’m saving it as a Christmas present for next year. And that’s why this post is password-protected!

And then, we have a project that I’ve been fiddling with for at least two years now, which started when I couldn’t find a set of potholders that matched the image in my head. Really, I just wanted blue potholders, to contrast nicely with our yellow kitchen, but not plain blue, I wanted something interesting, but just couldn’t find it. “Well gosh,” I said to my pre-motherhood self, “I’ll just make them myself!” And armed with some lovely fabric and a felted thriftstore sweater as batting, I made these:

Which took forever and a day to finish, because there was always one more thing to get done. But I attached the hanging loops (cheapy keychain rings, because I don’t know when I’m going to get to Joann’s to get proper loop things) this afternoon. You can’t really see it in the picture, but the glove has a patch over the thumb that covers up where I didn’t leave enough seam allowance when assembling the glove, and part of the batting is sticking out. That was one more thing to do! But they’re done now and they look quite nice.

Now, about this “last projects” thing: I’ve disassembled my sewing/quilting/crafting station in my study for the time being, and packed away all my fabric, my sewing machine, etc. in bins in the basement. James likes to play in my study and I just couldn’t keep him out of all the dangerous materials, and materials that weren’t dangerous but were carefully organized (like fabric). There just isn’t enough out-of-reach storage in that room.

Plus, having all those Unfinished Objects sitting around silently mocking me from the corners of my room was starting to get to me. So I put them all away, and thereby gave myself permission to not worry about them for a while. I figure that in one to three years, James will be old enough that I’ll be able to get them back out again. I’d really hoped to be able to keep working on projects off and on while James was small, but it’s just not working out that way, so it’s easier to just pack it all away and come back to it later.

(As a consolation prize, I’m getting myself this desk, in white, from IKEA, which I’ve been wanting for years. Now I have an excuse to buy it – it’s childproof office storage!)