And one day it struck me! I knew what I wanted to do! Out came the Viking and I sewed away and came out with this....

And a close up of my favorite square :)

So, the binding is on, just need to hand sew it down and she will be finito! I chose a poly satin binding, since I remember loving the silky edges of my baby blanket... turned toddler blanket... turned little kid blanket... I really hung on that blanket longer than I probably should have. :)

I'll post once she's all done! Yay!

Sunday I got up sat on my deck staring at the boats, went to lunch with a friend... and then set to work. Cutting, sewing, cutting, sewing... two size blocks... fairly large blocks to keep it simple: 20(ish)"x3" and 10(ish)"x5.25"...

There was a 4400 marathon on so I spent a lot of time watching that... I really need rear speakers...
Anyway... the point is Sunday I got the entire thing pieced, sandwiched, quilted (stitch in the ditch method), and trimmed by the time I was ready to go to bed. Yesterday I got home from work put binding on it (which is much more of a feat than you may realize...

and now it is complete... I don't know if I will do that again anytime soon but it was nice to see how much actual time it takes.

I think I am going to send this one to my year long swap partner from getCrafty since her birthday was Sunday and she has sent me some stellar things so far…

Time to quilt this sucker!

This is the one is baby farm animals for my friend pregnant with a boy:

This one if for a friend pregnant with a girl but HATES pink and purple:

I am hapy with them...

I made it for my baby, who at that point in January still needed three more months before she was going to hatch. Well guess what, she's here!

It hasn't really been cold enough to use the quilt yet, but I think once all the family and friend visits slow down, I'll be able to lay it on the floor flannel-side up and let her roll around on it.

I have another one in the works but have no idea how long it will be until I get a chance to focus on it. Babies sure do eat up a lot of your free time! But it's worth it.

I'm wondering how all of you decide on a quilting pattern? I am thinking I'd like something that's fairly simple looking, maybe geometric to match the theme of the quilt top, but not boring either! I'd like the pattern to be dense enough that the quilt will pucker nicely after being washed.

I'd love to hear where you all get your inspiration/ideas for quilting designs - thanks!

For the bee, I'm thinking T-shirt quilt. I had some ideas in my head, but a search of craftster (recommended by the Hat City Squadders) turned up some really great ideas, and I'll probably follow this person's instructions: http://www.goosetracks.com/T-Shirt%20Quilt%20Instructions.html

However, as I searched craftster, I found samples of rag quilts, like so: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=24600.0
The ease of this one is so compelling! Plus, I could use the electric weed whacker finishing technique, which would be so badass.

I think it will probably come down to whether I have enough good T-shirts to make a respectable quilt, though.

For now, I'm merely musing.

As so often happens to me with sewing projects, I became obsessed and spent much of Sunday sewing and now have all the blocks sewn up and am just working on arranging them before I start stitching together the strips!

Here's our progress so far:

Sorry for the poor color quality! My living room at 9:30pm + Flash Photography = Washed Out Fabric!

I'm thinking the top will be finished by this weekend and I can start the DUN DUN DUN.... actual quilting. Stay tuned! ;)

I started another top in college...or at least saw a great pattern for a Seminole strip patch quilt in a library book. I got as far as photocopying the instructions and buying the polished cottons (again all solids: black, lavender, turquoise, green, royal blue. I never cut it out. About 5 years later I met my husband (1987) to be and when he helped me move we found the box of quilt fabric. He liked the pattern and I decided I would start it for as gift for him. (I had an idea he was the one by then and that if I gave it to him I would be able to have it around as well.) I got things cut out and started sewing the strips. It wen pretty fast ...just straight line sewing...but then you cut the strips apart, rearrange them and resew them to create patterns. Then things got frustrating....I did not have a seam allowance guide on my ancient singer...I used a piece of tape, I was not very methodical about pressing, things were definitely not perfect. But I got all the strips assembled. Then it was time to decide on the order of the strips (I consider instructions to be more like guidelines. By now I had moved to the west coast to start med school and my honey was in Colorado finishing his PhD. The strips go put in a box, for years.

Fast forward to now. We are now married 14 years and have a 7 year old son. I have not sewn in years, except to make panels for window coverings, or mend things., I never seem to have time...but in a fit of January housecleaning I came across that box of quilt pieces. I resolved to finish it. My old machine died years ago and for my birthday a few years ago I got a Sears Kenmore machine. nothing fancy but it has a buttonholer! I decided on an arrangement, but everything was wicky wocky....I could see I needed to do a lot of trimming. What a minute? I am not even sure what I am doing here. I went to the library and checked out several quilt books. I gotta say, Quilting for dummies was an excellent guide. I bought a rotary cutter, ruler and mat and it made a new woman out of me.

I squared up my strips, pressed everything correctly, sewed everything together and pressed, then squared up the entire quilt. I ended up sacrificing some nice parts of strips because one strip was almost a foot shorter than the other strips for some reason...maybe pieces of it got lost in the shuffle along the way. I called my local quilt shop and they gave a few names of machine quilters. I called a few and clicked right away with a wonderful woman named Vandy. We made an appointment to meet so I could see her work and it was beautiful. Her husband has built her a studio for her quilting machine. Was I envious of her spread and stash!

I left with instructions to get a back pieced up which I did in a pretty turquoise/green/lavender batik which was on sale. But when I got back to Vandys; she said no go...apparently the wax residue in batik when used with a poly cotton blend like my top is not a good combo and leads to bad thread tension juju. SO back I went to the fabric store and bought some basic Kona cotton in black, rust, teal and green and pieced up the Denyse Schmidt Day at the Beach back with some vintage fabric insets. IT went very fast and Vandy was a bit disapproving of my choices I could tell...not in terms of fiber, but in color and design. Vandy is definitely of the old school of quilt aesthetics, but it just not my vibe. But she is a professional and the customer is always right. We had originally discussed doing some stitch in the ditch following the Seminole patchwork. But in th interim I had changed my mind to doing a loose figure 8 ala Denyse Schmidt. No can do said Vandy. She recommended vermicelli...I said no. How about water stipple? No. She gave me a book to look at and I picked the a japanesy whirlpool kinda feel. I choose black thread and she said expect a call in two months there were lots of quilts ahead of mine.

Then I got home and became wishy washy. Maybe I should hand quilt this baby? Yeah, right. Maybe I should go back to stitch in the ditch? Maybe I should ask Vandy to use nylon monofilament instead of black cotton thread? A thousand little anxieties (which I am not normally prone too). And just when I had made up mind to call Vandy, she called me to say the quilt was done..It had only been 10 days at the most. She had been dreading some very difficult quits and had leapfrogged mine to the head of the line because it was “easy”. I could tell by her voice on the answering machine that she was happy with how it turned out. And I was too. It looked fantastic! I brought my girl home and trimmed her up, made binding out of the extra black polished cotton and did double fold, continuous binding all around. You machine sew one edge, mitering the corners and then fold over to opposite side and slip stitch. It looks incredibly professional, except for where the ends meet..all the books were kind of vague on that point. It is kind of lumpy but barely noticeable. I finished last night and slept under it for the first time. I am quilter hear me roar! you can see the quilt at the Denyse Schmidt flickr group or my blog