Crackpot Quilters’ Blog

Wow! There’s been a lot of activity on the blog lately. So, I finally took the time to download these pictures of a baby quilt I made for the new son of our pastor and his wife.

Here’s a close-up view:

In other news, I finally finished Nicholas’ quilt!!! He has been so patient waiting for it, and now he can finally sleep under it.

Okay, fellow Crackpots, I’ve hit the Nesting Bug. Last Friday I was out at Joann’s, because rotary cutting blades were 50% off, and I was looking at the fat quarter bundles (30% off), because I love fat quarter bundles. I had been thinking about what to do about the baby’s room, since whatever we do will need to be gender-neutral, but the gliding rocker that Nancy is generously passing along to us (thanks, Nancy!) is blue. I had been thinking about a yellow-and-blue color scheme, which wouldn’t be entirely gender-neutral, but probably close enough (and we’re not ones to quibble about the defeminizing influence of the color blue on little girls).

So Joann’s had two fat quarter bundles in pastel yellow and blue palettes. And one of them had a fabric with nursery-rhyme characters, including a cow jumping over a moon, a dish and a spoon, a cat playing a fiddle, and a dog in trousers. (I’m not sure what the trousers have to do with anything.)

But wait! One of the yellows is actually a multi-colored paisley, with pink and green as well as blue. Yellow and blue and pink and green all together are very gender-neutral…

Do you see where this is going?

So, I picked up the two bundles, a couple of additional fat quarters in pink, and combined them with stuff from my stash to put together the following palette:

(Note to self: I need more greens!) Now I just have to decide what to do with it. It’s definitely going to be a wall hanging, not a full baby-sized quilt. I’m thinking about one of the large one-block baby quilt patterns that have been in Quiltmaker in the last few years, or maybe a small sampler of sorts with four blocks or so. Any suggestions for a relatively large, complex, abstract quilt block design like Arrow Crown or Memory?

Here are some photos of Sara’s Quilt in process. The next step it to put the border on. We can have the bubble border:

Or the striped border:

And here is a view of the entire quilt without the borders:

Nancy and I thought the bubble border looked best, but when you see everything together with the pink sashing, the bubble border makes a very soft, pink quilt. The stripe adds a little zip. It all depends on what look we want. So let me know what you think. That includes Crackpots who are only observers as well as the participants in this project.

These baby quilt blocks are now in the mail to Nancy for assembly, but I took a couple pictures last night before packing them up.

First, Log Cabin with a Chain:

(I somehow picked the wrong bunny when fussy-cutting the one that ended up in the lower right corner – it should be looking up like the other left-facing bunnies)

Second, a block called Review:

Here is my third block for the Todd baby Quilt #2. It is Darting Minnows.

This was made with the ruler set “Tri-Recs” I got at the Early Morning After Thanksgiving Joann’s Shopping Festival. It was a cinch to make those long narrow triangles with these rulers. You cut a strip the required size then use the rulers to cut, turning them upside down every other cut. To cut the mirror images of the long narrow triangles, you fold the strip right (or wrong) sides together and cut both at the same time. Everything fit together perfectly, which did not always happen in the past. I would recommend the “Tri-Recs” ruler set if you are going to make a number of blocks with these shapes–especially if you get them on sale.

Here are photos of some of the blocks for the Second Little Princess, Elizabeth’s baby sister. I think we are going to have a great looking quilt. The blocks are, from top to bottom,

Marty’s Duck and Ducklings

Emily’s Crazy Block

Barb’s Block #1

Marty’s Star of Hope

Barb’s Bunny Trail

Emily’s Ducks and Bunnies