Olivia's Quilt

When Jessica and I started brainstorming about my niece's quilt, we went back and forth on several ideas. At some point we realized we'd both pinned this quilt and then it was decided. Apologies for the less than quality photos. I need to not wait until it's too late and then just having to make do...

We loved the way our inspiration quilt made the secondary pattern of X's. Jess was in charge of making sure everything was in the right place. I was in charge of sewing and trying not to mess that up. This did cause one issue, in that, to get the desired amount of x's without having to make even smaller HSTs, we had to go bigger. As in the biggest baby blanket ever. Good news, it's so big it will take her straight through her toddler years and then some.

My sis-in-law picked out this duvet from Pottery Barn Kids for the little Miss's room. We stepped up the colors just a notch.... It was so fun gathering this variety of fabrics, picking stuff up here and there and pulling from our stash.

The duvet was used for the backing with plenty left over for room accents. We did simple straight line quilting on point. The binding is a deep purple.

The solid fabrics are all Kona Cotton. Aurifil thread was used for both pricing and quilting. The batting is Pellon's Nature Touch that we purchased from Joann.
We had such fun making this and of course it is full of love and good wishes for this little one as she starts her life.

Quilt- Swiss Army Style

I have slowly, so slowly, but surely tried to make quilts for everyone in my family. I have been knocking around ideas for this guy's quilt for quite awhile now. He's my big boy and he travels a lot, to far away places. I hate to saddle people with "things" if it is not convenient to their lives but I finally just had to do it and I'm glad I did. Cause, look at that face. Yes, I know that he is all grown up, but yikes, it seriously seems like yesterday that this man was only seven.

 This is my take on the old Swiss Army Blankets. I love those things and thought why not interpret it into a quilt? Since my son is 6'2" I made it long. Maybe ridiculously long, but I wanted him to be warm. I think it ended up over 8 feet. Silly me, I didn't measure but you can see when he holds it up it still drags the ground. When they originally produced the wool army blankets, the maker embroidered their initials and the year made on the blanket in the lower left corner. My twist on that was to embroider his initials and the year in the same corner. Of course I forgot to get a picture of that, because I waited until the day before he left to take the pictures and I may or may not have been close to boo hooing.

 I used Kona Cotton in white, coal and cardinal to piece the quilt and quilted the many, many mostly straight lines in Aurifil 50 weight Dove Grey. I kept the back simple with the same fabrics.

I love that he wrote me a few days after he left to let me know that the length of the quilt was the best part, and it was in fact keeping him warm. That's the whole point, isn't it?

Plus Quilt

Several years ago, while working at an amazing place, I bought a ton of this American Jane Recess fabric by Sandy Klop. I always meant to make a quilt with it. I made some other stuff, Jessica made quite a few things, yet it wasn't until this year that I finally decided to treat myself to the quilt I wanted. 

Almost six years it took me, I may be a bit slow....

I'm kinda glad I waited though because if I'd have made it back then, it wouldn't be this quilt. 

I love this quilt.

I used only one of each pattern/color for the pluses. The background is blue dot stripe. No pattern, just cutting up 4.5 inch squares and seeing what happened. Pieced and quilted with Aurifil thread. 

I backed the whole thing in Maggie's dress navy. 

It lives on my couch for now and it makes me happy every time I look at it. It made me even happier to come home one day to it being used as a fort by two sweet babes. 

Because that's what it's all about.

When a Quilt is Like a Hug

About two and a half months ago a sweet young couple, Andrew and Sharria got married. Six weeks later they found out that Andrew was very ill. When Jess and I heard about this, we felt pretty heart broken. We've known this family longer than My Guy and I have been married.  

The day after we found out, I read Sharria's FB post, she said she had been singing this children's Bible class song to herself. 

Then I couldn't get the song out of my head. 

The next day, I told Jess we needed to make them a quilt. 

She said of course. 

For the next four days we worked and it was pretty awesome. I don't like to be too publicly emotional about things but, this was, for me, a prayer vigil for this couple. Jess and I wanted them to have something tangible to hold onto while they are going through this time, something to help them remember there are a lot of people praying.

Jess and I knew we wanted a scrappy rainbow quilt. Rainbows are hope and promise.

 We were inspired by this quilt at crazy mom quilts.

 I knew I wanted the lyrics appliqued on the quilt and even though Jess thought I was a bit crazy for choosing to applique it, she went along with it and cut the all letters out for me. 

 I cannot tell you how much we both adore this quilt. How happy it made us to send it off in time for their journey. How much we hope they continue to feel the love we sewed into this.

 Because quilting is a community thing, I have scraps from friends. These are a couple of scraps I really enjoyed using in the quilt. Thanks ladies.

 Jessica found a lovely herringbone flannel at Joann. We did simple wobbly organic straight line quilting. All of our piecing and quilting was done with Aurifil thread. 

 Andrew goes in for surgery today. If you have a moment please say a prayer for him, and his family.

If you'd like to read more about this couple you can go here to their Rally for Andrew page or here for their Face Book page.

Thanks so much for stopping by.