When I heard that our friends, Ruth and Austin, were expecting their first son, I knew that I wanted to make him a quilt.  I asked Ruth to be thinking about color combinations and to have a look around on the internet for pattern ideas that she liked.

She responded with the colors blue, red and gold and found a very simple, sweet pattern that she liked.  Her comment was that “they loved mountains” and that was why it had appealed to her.

I started the quilt in the usual way by pulling way too many fabrics out of the box and then weeding them down to the proper number…..

Now I had to figure out the size of the flying geese (aka mountains).    I have to say that I was NOT at my brightest and best during this process and it ended up being a lot of trial and error, but eventually I had the strip put together……

As I had sewed each triangle, I ended up with “bonus” triangles that had been dutifully sewn into more half-square triangles and then into more geese…..

My thought was to include these geese somewhere in the body of the quilt, but I simply couldn’t find an arrangement that I liked……

OR…..

so I moved back to the original design……

I wanted to keep the strips as straight as possible so I used my 1/4 inch foot to do the piecing.  I LOVE the little edge that guides the fabric….

I then spent time debating about whether or not to add a border, but eventually decided to leave it simple.

After putting together the backing (while STILL trying to use the extra flying geese), I was ready to quilt.  Since I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to quilt it, I followed the advice that I always give to my classes and started with what I knew……   straight lines down the mountain/geese backgrounds…..

But where to go next……  I knew that the family loved hiking and especially fishing and I was sure that Bo would spend much of his life participating in these activities, so I felt that his quilt had to include references to those things.   After much thought I decided to split the larger section into strips and quilt each one with a different design, starting with mountains……

…..followed by a line of trees……

…..a stream of trout……

….a field of flowers……

….and ending with a few more trees.

I was happy with the back……

….happy with the finished quilt……

….and even happier when I got to present it to the boy himself…..

Michael and I wish only the best to this very special family…..

(Now I just have to figure out what to do with those extra flying geese!!!)

 

One of my daughter’s best friends is expecting her first baby and since I had made her a quilt when she graduated from High School AND when she got married,it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to make the new baby a quilt.

The problem began with the fact that they had decided to NOT find out if it was a boy or girl so I really didn’t have a good idea of what color to head for.   I got onto her “wish” list and noticed that most of the colors were whites, beiges and greys…..OK, that is the first clue!!!  

Then I saw a couple of stuffed animals……a giraffe and an elephant.   ANOTHER clue!!!

In the back of my mind, I started remembering a pattern that I had saved from some magazine, MANY years ago…..

I saved the pattern as a jpg and pulled it into PowerPoint so that I could size it and print out the enlarged pattern.

I had so much fun working with the design, trying to keep the colors a bit muted…..  

At this point, it needed so large borders so I decided to add a scrappy one…..

I had a marvelous time with all of the quilting, especially adding texture to the animals….

I am very happy with the finished quilt…….

and the Mom-to-be seemed happy too…..

The last two weeks have been crazy busy!!   I had the privilege of speaking at the Hall County Quilter’s Guild one Monday and then teaching a one day Machine Quilting Workshop on the Tuesday.   It is so much fun to visit different guilds and meet new quilters!!

Even with everything else, I have been able to finish the piecing on the Pinwheel baby quilt.

I have had to be SUPER careful with the piecing because every single non-matching point would show terribly.   Consequently, I meticulously planned which direction each seam would go and pinned like I have never pinned before…..

As I took each piece off of the design wall, I made sure that each corner was pinned in place…..

Then as I sewed the pinwheel points, I sewed another line just outside my original stitching….

….which meant that I had some wonderful extra pinwheel parts!!!

I used those extra bits and made a bunch more pinwheels and then  started playing with border ideas…..

After about an hour or so, my eyes gazed across this piece of gradation fabric from Caryl Bryer Fallert…..

When I put it up on the design wall, I knew that it was the way to go….

The only problem was that I didn’t have very much of the gradation, so some very careful cutting and piecing ensued!!!   Eventually, the top was finished….

I quickly put together a back…..

….and now just have to do the quilting!!    I am thinking that I will do some “circle-esque” designs in the plain blocks to echo the design in the fabrics.

Hopefully I can get back to this one early in the week!!!!

I have a friend from my Church who is a wonderful artist and designer.  Her name is Karla and she specializes in repeat designs, having several wallpaper lines and also a number of other great designs on the market.   You can check out her blog here.

Well, she and her husband are having a baby girl.  As a matter of fact, she is at the hospital RIGHT NOW!!!   So exciting!!

When I told Karla that I wanted to make her a quilt, she said that she had two yards of fabric printed at Spoonflower and would I like to use it in the quilt.  It is a wonderful repeat design with fun colors and I was really excited to work with it……

 

I started out by picking other fabrics to go with this one…..

 

I had been considering patterns.   Karla likes more traditional designs so I was thinking about a pinwheel quilt, however, when I got the fabric, I felt like the scale of the print was too large to cut into a lot of smaller pieces so I got onto EQ and started playing.

I came up with this idea and thought that it would be perfect…..

However, when I started laying out the pieces, I didn’t like how it was looking….

My non-quilting friend Charlene looked at it said that all she was seeing was the green fabrics when I really wanted to highlight the pinwheels.

The next day I put on my thinking cap and started drafting more pinwheel block, in larger sizes this time.

I also cut the greet squares down to a smaller size and the result was…..

SOOOO much better.

Now I have to work on the outside borders and decide if I am going to add the triangles on the side or leave those off and play with the borders instead.

I did have one epiphany during this process.   I realized that accuracy is going to be super important when I actually start sewing so I tried to fold the squares in half VERY carefully.  

As I was cutting down the green squares, I was opening up the fold, cutting the square down to 2 inches and then meticulously re-folding in half.   Then I grabbed for a ruler and accidentally picked up on that a friend had given me recently.   It is the  Eleanor Burns “Quilt In A Day” Triangle Square Up ruler…..

 

I was able to leave the triangle folded and use the ruler to square it up……

It was SO much faster…..

So, since the baby is being born as we speak, I had better get busy and figure out the borders so that I can start piecing…..and fast!!!