winter woodland | quilt 01 of 2015, for Chase

Here's my first quilt finish of 2015! It feels like a great way to start off the year. This quilt is for a little boy who hasn't been born yet, the baby brother to the little girl who owns this quilt! Jen is expecting her third baby and asked me to make a quilt for him about three months ago and we picked fabrics very quickly. Jen knows just what she wants and also trusts me to choose fabrics and designs that I think will work together, which is a great feeling. She wanted something with woodland animals and a combination of orange, minty green, and gray colors. I seriously loved shopping for this quilt, but then putting fabrics together is always one of my favorite parts of the process :) From top to bottom, the fabrics are orange chevron by Riley Blake, Joel Dewberry's wood grain, elk family by Birch Fabrics, Lizzy House's leaf tails, bear hike in shroom by Birch Fanrics, and Joel Dewberry's herringbone. The feature print running vertically down the length of the quilt is bear hike again, but obviously multicolored. That last print was so hard to find that I had to order it from Australia! Although I just looked for it again and found it easily in the US. Oh well! The pattern I used is a favorite for baby quilts, Bijou Lovely's Color Block quilt. I've made it three times so far and have another one in the queue!

The back is a bunch of fabrics left over from the front of the quilt plus a couple others - squared elements from Art Gallery in carbon and dottie by Cotton + Steel in bandana. I have to say that my favorite print is bear hike, and rightfully so! The quilt was designed around it, after all. I had one little scrap left and made a mug rug out of it. It was sold just before Christmas and will hopefully enjoy a long life underneath steaming mugs of coffee :)

I quilted organic straight lines, starting out very close together somewhere around the center near the bears and gradually getting farther and farther apart as the lines get closer to the edges. The pattern created by the lines reminds me just a bit of tree bark or wood grain which is a nice design element to add to this quilt that I've called "winter woodland." It's bound in more orange chevron with a small strip of Kona coral left over from my Michael Miller challenge quilt. I love scrappy bindings so much! They're my favorite kind of binding. Jen is coming to pick up the quilt this afternoon and is just about ready to welcome her baby boy into the family! He's due in March and I hope this quilt provides just the right welcome for him.

P.S. Special thanks to Matt who took these photos for me after finishing up a shoot in Providence, and to my mom who offered to watch the boys so I could tag along. As a bonus we got lunch at The Grange after! It was the perfect spot for my quilt mini shoot, and as always, the perfect spot to eat lunch.

a quilt for Liam | elephants and stripes (of course)

This simple baby quilt is the last from my backlog of unblogged quilts! I made it for a friend's son (who happens to have just turned one on Sunday - happy birthday, Liam!) and chose the prints after spying some elephants on one of her baby related pinterest boards :) I had the perfect gray elephant fabric in my stash and then chose lots of blue and gray fabrics to go with it. I didn't follow a patten, just cut large squares and then used a slice and insert technique to make a few of the blocks a little more interesting.

Navy sashing to give all the prints some breathing room...

and green polka dot binding for fun :)

As usual, the back is a large cut (this one is a gray circle/dot print by Denyse Schmidt for Joann) plus leftover fabrics from the front. I quilted it with simple straight lines on either side of all the seams.

Also, wasn't the light just perfect on the day I took these photos? Sometimes I love our living room :) Anyway, thanks for hanging in there with all these quilts! Now brace yourselves, because I have a list of quilts to make as long as my forearm and this time I intend to keep up with them here!

a quilt for Audrey | stars and hexagons

I have a few more quilts to blog about before I'm all caught up, and then I'll be making a new wave of quilts! So many of my friends are pregnant at the same time - currently I have seven baby quilts to make this year, all before the end of July! And there's no telling who else will announce that they're expecting before the end of the year. Anyway, I made this quilt for my friend Hillary's daughter, Audrey, before she was born, and she'll be two in just a few short weeks.

Hillary liked the look of stars and hexagons, so I pieced together some large hexies and let the negative space create the stars. It's difficult to see in the photos, but some of the white hexagons are actually made of a really sweet pink on white flocked polka dot fabric.

Some other sweet details are these little strawberries, funny olives, and lots of florals.

It's quilted with simple straight lines to outline the hexagons. I made this quilt in December of 2012, and looking at these pictures makes me realize how much my skills have improved since then! It's nice to look back and be able to see progress.

The backing is a large cut of a Heather Bailey print, a strip of pink seersucker (I love using seersucker in baby quilts, it makes them so soft!), and one other random pink print I had in my stash.

It's bound in the pink seersucker, too. I think we all know I love a stripey binding!

I wrote this label out on the morning of Hillary's shower and brought it with me so my mom could hand stitch it on for me! I have exactly zero hand stitching skills (really need to work on that) and my mom is always kind enough to help me out. Usually I try to piece a square of fabric into the backing so I can just write directly on the quilt, but I didn't do that here.

And just this past weekend Matt helped me put my idea for a quilt label into an actual design that I'm having printed! I can't wait to use them. These are the things that get a quilter excited :)

Now I have to get to work on a quilt for Audrey's little sister! She's due in May but I had the colored pencils out today so I could start sketching out a design. Coming up with a plan is one of my favorite parts!