I'm Alive!

I can't believe I haven't posted anything in two months. I promise, I'm still alive. Just super busy. I started back to work last Wednesday and before that I was trying to cram as much sewing and baby time as possible into every minute. So I've got lots of stuff to share and don't even know where to start. Well, baby pictures are always good.

Let's see, the Hexie quilt has been set aside. I've sewn together about 12 out of 25 rows, but wasn't even close to finishing it in time for the wedding. So, since I have a ton of other things I need to get done with upcoming deadlines, I figured I'd set that aside and work on other stuff. I have 3 of these panels stitched together.

Then I decided that I should join the DCMQG Bee. Lynne had the first month and I'm queen bee for the second. Here are the blocks I made for her:

She wanted aqua and purple wonky stars with low volume backgrounds. I think I did alright, although aqua is one of those colors that completely frustrates me.

And here is the block I chose for my month. I made two test blocks and they were way more fun than I thought they would be since I don't usually do scrappy improv:

They will become a baby quilt for my nephew Jackson, who is due in August. That's the great thing about having two siblings who are 15 months and 3 years younger, we all end up with babies at roughly the same time (the same year). In this case, three boys who have already been dubbed the Three Musketeers.

Next up we have a whale baby quilt, using the Preppy the Whale pattern from Elizabeth Hartman. I bought the pattern and it made the quilty math so much easier because I had actual measurements for each piece to base it off of, not just eyeballing a design. First I blew up the whale times two, then I chopped the pattern into 4" (finished) sections. There was much scribbling on scrap paper before I was satisfied and I'm happy to say that it worked out.

I also pieced a back, basted, quilted and started making binding for it. But ended up stuck because I didn't have enough red solid to make the binding and the red and white striped binding I had leftover from another quilt also isn't enough. Unfortunately, since we're on a super tight budget until I get paid again, I have been unable to buy more. Hopefully it will get done soon though and I can write a post just about that quilt, because I think it's turning out fabulously! It's for the son of our friends, Kevin and Jess.

I also basted the braille alphabet quilt for the son of a coworker.

I'm extremely happy to say that I received the Pixel Michigan quilt back from the longarmer and didn't waste any time making scrappy binding for it and finishing it off. It's been hanging out on our bed since I presented it to my husband for his long overdue birthday, Christmas, birthday present. Here is a sneak peek, as I'll be making an entire post for that finish as well. It more than deserves it.

I am once again working on the wedding quilt for my brother-in-law and his fiancée. I'm making a Scrappy Swoon quilt, just a bit bigger than the original, so it fits a queen sized bed. Here's where I am with that, I just have to sew this layer together and onto the center and then have one more layer to go:

Although I think the greenish blues really stand out, the purple and the black blend together a little more than I would have liked. You can barely see that the center is supposed to be a star and not an X. But I like it anyway.

I've also done some work on the Layer Cake Sampler QAL and have paired one Sunnyside print with one white solid and drawn the lines on the back. I've even sewn up several of the pairs, cut some apart, and even managed to finish my first block:

I quite like how this first one turned out, we'll see what happens with the rest.

I've also put in some work on my cross-stitch pieces, but mainly on the piece I started most recently. Forest by Satsuma Street. It is coming together much faster than I thought possible, although I haven't had a chance recently to work on it.

I'm making it to go along with the baby quilt for my nephew. My sister-in-law said that she had a pillow that needed a cover, so that's the plan. Not sure how I'm going to "frame" it, but I'm thinking maybe a scrappy border to match the quilt for the front and then an envelope back that doesn't require a zipper.

Phew, that was a longer post than anticipated, but I really have been quite busy. And that's not including the guild meetings and the Denyse Schmidt lecture I attended. Maybe I'll post something about those some other time.

WIP: Hexie Quilt

With my sister's wedding getting every closer (middle of May), I've been focusing almost exclusively on getting at least the top of the quilt done. This has been slow going, because infant (i.e. wailing/smiling, tiny dictator). He's getting so big that we've had to remove the bassinet from the pack 'n play and just bed him down on the mattress.

Anyway, my hexie quilt is coming along. I finished cutting all of my fabrics, and I think I only accidentally cut one green fabric twice. Then I decided to do some quilty math to figure out how many half hexies I actually needed after counting how many I had. Turns out I was about 9 short of my 425 that I needed. Pretty good. So I grabbed another five greys from my hoard of text fabrics and cut sets from each.

Here are my final stacks (minus the final 5 sets of grey):

Then I started figuring out the layout. Problem is I have a tiny space to lay things out in and a king sized quilt. So here was my solution:

I worked from left to right, continuously stacking and adding and stacking and adding until I came to the end of the row. Then I would look at the picture from the previous set of rows to work on the next several rows. Slow, but effective. The only problem is that I can't move anything around once I've put it somewhere and thus I painted myself into a very grey corner because I didn't space the greys out very effectively.

So today I laid out rows 10-25 on our living room floor, where it barely fit and rearranged some of the hexies into a more even layout.

I'm a little happier about this portion of the layout, although I'm not particularly happy about being unable to see the other 9 rows laid out with it so I can check the entire layout. I did send it to my sister and she likes it. So that's all that matters.

Sewing and Mothering

So my biggest project is of course my little man currently. He's just over a month old now, my how the time flies.

Because everyone needs some baby pics in their life. :)

However, I've gotten a bit of time here and there to get into my craft room and I also made it to the DCMQG March meeting while my hubby stayed home with the little man.

So here's what I've been working on:

Cutting the grey, coral, green, blue, and blue-green fabrics for my sister's wedding quilt.

Here's my stacks so far. The corals are completely done and I have a decent stack, but that's only supposed to be an accent color. My greys are barely started and I'm about halfway through the blues, greens, and blue-greens and I already have rather large stacks of those (greys are another accent color, and the rest are supposed to make up the majority of the king sized quilt). I've been cutting 4.5" strips and then sub-cutting into these half hexies, two of each fabric.

The other thing I've been working on from my list of UFO's is the Modified Bento Box quilt for my mother.

I already have about 18 blocks from the Stash Bee and I'm making another 7 to make 25. I have all of the strips cut for the blocks, now I just need to finish putting them together. These are the centers with the first frame done. I tried to keep the insides omni-directional, so I can chop the blocks apart if I still feel like it. I'm also trying to decide how big I want to make the quilt and if I'll need some sashing in between the blocks.

I have the backing made for the Michigan pixel quilt and have followed up with my long-armer to see if she's even still interested. She is and so I need to print out the invoice and send the quilt to her so she can get started. Maybe once my hubby goes back to work, I'll load the little man in the stroller and make a trip to the post office.

And then there is the quilt for the little man. I finally decided on the book quilt from Patchwork Please! I've even made the first two blocks for it at the guild meeting.

I'm trying to make all of the "covers" mean something, so here we have Coyote from Native American oral legends and a dragon to symbolize the wealth of dragon/fantasy books I plan to read to him. I'm also finally cutting in my Oakshott cottons for the backgrounds. Well, eight of the 12 fat eighths I bought a while ago. I'm doing two of each color. I already have all of the print fabrics and cover fabrics picked out and matched with the Oakshott backgrounds. I'm making all the spines and corners black to keep things consistent. Sashing and borders are still up in the air. These blocks are only 8.5" square, so I think they'll need something.

I also finally finished trimming the HSTs for my first block of the Layer Cake Quilt Along for my Sunnyside Kate Spain quilt and started sewing the block together. I've got one seam to go, so no picture yet.