"Tzute" | a quilt for Nico

On Sunday my friend Courtney welcomed her third child into the world, a baby boy she and her husband named Nico. I worked on this quilt throughout both of our third pregnancies this summer and delivered it today. I don't usually give my quilts very creative names but I felt obligated to do so this time because I submitted it as my work for the Modern Quilt Guild challenge which was sponsored by Riley Blake this spring. I called it "Tzute" because I was inspired by the graphic, colorful designs of Guatemalan textiles. Throughout our pregnancies Courtney and I had been drooling over the bags made by Nena and Co., so when I was thinking of what kind of quilt to make for her babe I decided to try to evoke the bold feeling the bags often have. Courtney's favorite color is green and she and her husband didn't know what they were having at the time so I set the black and white prints against a background of vivid blues and greens. I quilted each solid color with coordinating thread using straight lines, and quilted the black and white fabrics with contrasting thread. The back is made up of leftover solids, as is the binding. I attempted to line up a blue section of the mostly green binding with the blue section of the back and I was off by an inch! You can see it in the bottom right corner of the photo below. Next time I'll get it right ;)

The name of the quilt is a twist on the traditional part of the Maya Indian's daily dress called a "tzute" which can be translated as "multipurpose" cloth. Quilts are also multipurpose in their ability to warm, comfort, and depict beauty. I hope this quilt keeps Nico warm, brings him comfort, and is an object of beauty in their home. Welcome to the world, sweet boy! We can't wait to watch you grow.

summer in New England | a quilt for Ella June

It's summer in New England and my cousin Carlye just had her first baby, a girl to whom she and her husband gave the adorable name Ella June. I wasn't able to get a quilt finished in time for her shower a couple months ago, but when they announced her arrival a couple days ago I got right to work! With my own due date literally three days away I knew I didn't have much time to work so I kept it super simple. 

Carlye, our other cousin Meghan (who was also pregnant at the time and has since given birth to her son Elijah - here's the quilt I made for him), and I had brunch together a while back and Carlye mentioned she bought a pink anchor (I think it was an anchor? It was definitely something nautical, I know that...) to decorate the nursery so I went with that and pulled fabrics from my stash - some pink and navy sailboats by Sarah Jane, yellow and white stripes, florals on stripes by Katarina Roccella, and a pink herringbone print by Cloud 9. I sewed them up quick and then chose a bright yellow print from Dashwood Studio for the back, full of smiling suns and perfect for a summer baby.

I quilted it with a simple wave design (probably my most used quilting design as it fits the nautical themed quilts that are so popular among my friends and family and probably everyone else who lives in Rhode Island and New England) and bound it with more of the pink herringbone.

I brought it along to the Shack at Dutch Harbor in Jamestown where we had the yummiest tacos and burritos on Thursday night. Then Matt and our friend Rachel went cliff jumping at Fort Wetherill and I was super jealous... when I'm not forty weeks pregnant I'm definitely going! Here's a video he captured with his drone of Rachel and some other people who were at the cliffs...

my patchwork heart | a quilt for Eleanore

I began working on this quilt a couple months ago with no particular recipient in mind which is unusual for me. I almost always know who I'm making a quilt for, and that knowledge informs my design choices, but not this time. The fabric I used to make the patchwork heart is all from Riley Blake, from the current Modern Quilt Guild fabric challenge. We were instructed to do something new, to experiment with a style or technique we hadn't tried before. I had been wanting to make a pixel heart quilt for a while so I decided to use a technique in which one uses fusible interfacing to line up the fabric squares which ensures accurate piecing. I used Elizabeth Hartman's tutorial and found that it worked well, although I think the interfacing I used may have been a bit too heavy. The quilt didn't turn out as soft and crinkly as I would have liked it to, but it isn't terribly stiff. Just a bit stiff. I hope with use, love, and repeated washing that it will soften up! The back is mainly a piece from Heather Bailey's True Colors line along with a piece of fabric from last year's challenge, which is the same fabric I used on the front at the top and bottom. It's quilted with diagonal lines and the binding is scrappy and I love it. I don't usually like to make a quilt with the same pattern twice, but I'll definitely be making a pixel heart again!

Anyway, I ended up cheating on the fabric challenge a bit, and I feel badly about it, though I have a good reason. I found out that a woman I know (who is very sick and has been hospitalized for about the past three months) was about to have her baby six weeks early and it just felt right to give this quilt to them. Since the mother's illness is so serious I needed to finish the quilt soon if I wanted to be able to give it to her. With no time to order more of the Riley Blake fabric, I decided to use fabric from my stash and since it's not approved for the challenge I'm disqualified.

I hope that this quilt brings some measure of comfort to the family as they endure the pain of life's trials, and I pray that it reminds them of the strength of this mother's love for her daughter.

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.