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 Luke

I made this quilt for my new nephew back in January - it's hard to believe he's almost one! I took  photos on the morning he was born. We knew what his first name was going to be but his middle name was a secret so I had to wait until I found out so I could write the label.

I cut lots of half square triangles with these boyish fabrics a while ago with a different plan in mind, but when it came time to make the quilt I couldn't remember it! So I played around with a few designs and came up with this kind of random layout. I don't love it, but it was difficult working with the directional prints, especially the chevron. I think it will be well loved anyway! Babies aren't usually too picky about their quilts ;) The quilt I made for his brother uses some of the same fabrics, Alexander Henry 2D zoo, which I think is nice. They don't share a room, but I like the idea of the quilts coordinating anyway.

The backing is a soft blue seersucker and brown and white polka dot. Both were from my stash which is always nice.

The binding is my favorite part of this quilt - polka dots are always a good choice!

a doll for Appleby

Over a year and a half ago my dear friend Ari's daughter Appleby turned one and I wanted to make her a special birthday gift. I decided to make her a doll (I used this doll pattern and recommend it) that resembled her and a quilt for the doll using the same fabrics from the quilt I made for Appleby. I was overambitious and even asked Ari to send me a picture of her current favorite outfit of Appleby's so I could capture her one year old style forever in doll apparel. Although I am not one to sew garments I drafted a pattern for a sweater and leggings, even piecing the fabric for the sweater since it needed to be striped and I didn't have coral and cream striped fabric on hand. I admit to scrapping the first two sweaters I made and even asking for help dressing the doll after I realized I couldn't get the leggings on over her big feet. I didn't learn my lesson though because I've made this doll a bunch of times since then and made the same mistakes on the next two dolls. I wised up for the last two though, constructing the doll bodies out of the clothing fabric rather than making clothes, and I was much more successful. Anyway, I was pleased with the results and loved giving this doll and little doll quilt to Appleby!

two plus one equals three | a quilt for Parker

Plus quilts are pretty trendy right now and I had been wanting to make one of my own for a while. I decided to make this particular plus quilt (since I do think I'll be making another some day!) for my friend Jill's baby boy, Parker. He's their third baby which is why I named the quilt "two plus one equals three" - two children plus one baby equals three kids for Eric and Jill :) The pluses seemed like a great pattern to show off some fun fabrics, and since the blocks were on the large side I knew that it would come together pretty quickly. I used a combination of Michael Miller fabrics, seersucker, some Lizzy House, and a few random fabrics that were given to me by a friend who doesn't sew. The background is Kona silver which is my new favorite neutral. 

The back is made up of some large cuts of fabric - gray polka dots that my mom gave me (left over from the back of Ezra's I spy quilt), blue and white chevron, some airplanes left over from the quilt I made for my friend Keri's son Will, red polka dots, and some scraps left over from the front.

I did straight line quilting on either side of each seam to frame each block and bound it in Art Gallery squared elements. There's one little scrappy bit of binding in there though - a small piece of Lizzy House jewels.

A simple handwritten label finishes it off. 

And of course I had some assistance with the photos :)

welcome to the world | an embroidered birth announcement for Jonas

Just a quick post today! I love making "paper" with fabric and thread, and when I posted a picture of a piece on instagram my friend Ashley commented that it would make a cute baby announcement. Well, she was pregnant at the time so I filed that away and then made this for her son's room. I've made a few embroidered notes over the years and there's still something special about them to me. I definitely need to work on my embroidery skills though!

my first foray into hexagons | a quilt for Lillia

Thanks so much for all the sweet comments yesterday about the mug rugs! I really like making them so it's great to see so much interest. I'm going to be putting a few more in the shop, hopefully soon! I received a few requests for specific fabrics and colors and it will be fun to make some custom designs. If you missed the announcement yesterday you can see what I'm talking about here - mug rugs are now in the shop, and from now until the week before Christmas you can receive a discount on your purchase of one (or more!) to help out with all your holiday shopping. Now, back to sharing all the baby quilts! 

I made this quilt for a sweet baby girl who's just a little younger than Finn. I loved the bright and feminine prints mixed with gray and black from Violet Craft's Waterfront Park line of fabric. I had been wanting to work with hexagons for a while and these large ones seemed like a nice way to showcase the prints. I must admit though, I cheated and used this method of piecing! Next time I'll be going all the way, Y seams and all. For now, here's Lillia's quilt, ever so elegantly photographed on my living room floor. It was winter and I wasn't up for a photo shoot in the snow!

My favorite print is the one with the triangles, and also the dots. They remind me of braille or morse code. I quilted simple straight lines across the quilt, along either side of the seams that make up the top, middle, and bottom of each hexagon. I think free motion quilting would have added a little more to the design, but I had yet to attempt that at this point in my quilting career! This quilt was made in either December 2013 or January 2014, and I hadn't free motion quilted anything until this summer.

There's a fun bit of scrappy binding - some solid gray mixed in with a citron Denyse Schmidt print. I used Rachel's method of zig zag binding and I have to say I didn't love it and haven't used it again. Hers is much neater than mine, so there's that, but I prefer the look of a clean straight line stitched in the ditch, or invisible binding. 

I love handwriting my labels on gifted quilts, but I'm looking for some to use on quilts to sell. Any recommendations? I'm going to try to post about another baby quilt finish tomorrow. There are quite a few more that I need to write about!

under the sea and dreaming | a quilt for Giuliana

Edit: I gave this quilt to our friends Matt and Kerry when they were expecting their second daughter in early January of 2018.

This quilt represents the gateway to modern quilting for me. Not so much the design, obviously, because it's just a patchwork quilt with borders, but the fabric. It's Heather Ross's fabulous Mendocino line, out of print (but it's being reprinted! though it won't be out for a while apparently) and pretty much impossible to find. My mom and I discovered it at an MQX Quilt Festival back when we first started quilting in what was the only booth selling modern fabrics that weekend. Prior to the quilt festival I had only purchased fabric at Joann and a local fabric shop that doesn't have a great selection of anything really, so I was amazed to see what this modern fabric shop (in quilt festival booth form) had to offer. We snagged a layer cake and then I didn't do anything with it for ages because I couldn't bear to cut into it. I finally used it when I was teaching my friend Amanda how to make a quilt. We used Amy Smart's beginning quilting series (highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn how to quilt!) and made quilts side by side. 

Simple five inch squares are perfect for baby quilts. They come together quickly which is great when you're trying to finish a quilt the night before the baby shower, not that I've ever done that. Ha... back to modern quilting though! I typed Heather Ross's name into Google and discovered the online quilting community - blogs, independent fabric shops, the Modern Quilting Guild, and eventually the awesomeness that is #modernquilting on instagram. I'm proud to say that I'm part of that community now, and I love being able to contribute to it in my own small way.

For more information about this quilt and to make it yours, visit the listing on etsy here!