Chicky Quilt

Here is one of my most recent completions:

It is a very simple piecing and applique pattern, but turned out so cute!  My friend Elle and I both made one of these together - it was so fun to pick out which yellows we would use for each bird.  We bought a roll of various yellow prints and batiques and just had fun mixing and matching.  Each chicky body and wing uses a different yellow fabric. 

To assemble this quilt, just sew the corners onto larger white squares of fabric.  Then applique your chickies, and complete with sashing and borders. 

The other nice thing about this baby quilt is that it is unisex, so it makes a great gift for someone who is not finding out the sex of their baby until after it is born, or if you are like me and can't wait until you're 20 weeks along to start making baby quilts!  That's right - this quilt is the first in line for Baby Lynch (aka Spud)!

Happy quilting!

Quilt for Baby Sprout

Here is the finished quilt that I offered a sneak-peak of last week.  It is for my good friend Kristen's baby on the way... "Baby Sprout" for now. 

What am I Working On? . . . It's a Surprise!

Here is a sneak-peak.  This is a gift for a friend, so I don't want to reveal it yet... more next weekend.

Pretty Pink and Purple Pinwheels

These fabrics will probably look familiar... they are scraps from the Irish Garden quilt that I am making for our niece. The back is a pink flannel, so it will be snuggly for the little one when she arrives. 

A finished quilt nicely folded is very pretty and really doesn't need lots of additional wrapping.  I think it's nice to just use the left-over binding strips to tie around it and then use a fabric marker to write the "card." 

The quilt is for a co-worker's daughter who is scheduled to arrive in January.  We threw a surprise baby shower on Friday, which was a lot of fun.  Check out the diaper cake on the left - very impressive!

K.I.F.'s First Quilt - - The Quilt that Started It All

This is the very first quilt I ever made.  It was almost exactly five years ago.   My boyfriend at the time (now my husband!)'s sister was pregant with her first child and I didn't know what to get for a baby gift.  A law-school friend and now quilting mentor (who has her very own blog here:  http://elle-mental.blogspot.com/!) insisted that I could make a baby quilt in a weekend, and so the fun began!  Although this quilt definitely took longer than a weekend to finish, we were able to buy the fabric and piece the top in a day.  (A very long day...)  We had such a great time, that we've now made numerous quilts together and almost always go to our fabric store together when we're starting new projects.

This quilt was a very basic log cabin around this fun printed zoo animals.  Readers of my blog will recognize the zoo animals from another quilt that I made out of my stash. 

It is fun seeing the original pictures of this quilt.  Since it was made, it has been very well-loved.  My niece recently brought it on a family vacation, and it has definitely faded and been worn in!  There is nothing better than seeing a quilt you put so much time and effort into being well used though. 

I only quilted in the ditch around each piece, but I think it turned out well.  I hand-quilted the center block, but machine quilted each other block.  Machine quilting is supposed to hold up better to wear and tear, so it's probably a good thing I didn't hand quilt more of this one.  Since this quilt, however, I have hand-quilted every quilt.  Hopefully they hold up, but all of my quilts come with a lifetime service guarantee in case any seams come undone or any quitling gets loose.  

This is a very basic quilt that anyone really could piece together in a weekend.  All you have to do is find a patterned fabric that you like.  Decide what size blocks you are going to make by measuring each of the squares.  (Sometimes with these fabrics, the squares are not perfectly equal, but just pick a size and stick with it for all of the blocks.)  Then cut your log cabin prints into 2-inch strips, and start sewing.  You can go around each block as many times as you want... using four fabrics and two "frames" around each block worked well for this quilt.

I was not planning on doing any sashing, but once we had all of the log cabin blocks together it was obvious that it needed something coherent to pull it all together and to make it more girly.  Luckily, Elle has the best stash ever, and so this perfect pink was in there just waiting to be used on this quilt!

This quilt had a pieced back.  Elle is a big fan of pieced backs.  I have to say, by the time I get to the back, I'm usually just ready to get the thing assembled and start quilting it.  This one definitely turned out well and I will have to think about doing some sort of pieced back on the new quilt I am making for my niece.

Quilt for Baby L.A.

Here is another baby quilt that I recently made for another friend's first baby.  This is actually the second quilt that I made for this sweet baby girl.  Just like the zoo animals quilt seemed to perfectly fit baby J.H., the first quilt I made for baby L.A. just wasn't working.  One of the things I enjoy most about making baby quilts is thinking about the parents and the new baby to come.  As I was working on the first quilt I just didn't seem right.  Then I found these fabrics at my local quilt shop and decided the best thing would be to start over! 

This pattern is one of my favorites for baby quilts - Illinois Road.  I have probably made this quilt more than any other.  The quilting on this quilt is also done by hand.  You can just see that there are quilted shamrocks in the large pink blocks.  This plays on a shamrock print in the green batik.

The first quilt that I made for baby L.A. is now being finished for my local Project Linus chapter:  http://www.projectlinus.org/about.html.  This is a great charity that donates handmade blankets to children in need in hospitals, shelters, social service agencies, etc.  This is a great charity and they accept all kinds of quilts, handtied blankets, etc.  The only requirements are that it be handmade and that it be child appropriate.  I definitely encourage everyone to check it out.  It's a great way to honor all the well loved and cared for babies who I usually make quilts for.  As soon as it's done, I'll post pictures of the quilt that will be donated.

Quilt for Baby J.H.

This is a quilt I made for one of my friend's newest additions to her family.  This quilt was a personal milestone for me in my quilting life because it is the first quilt made entirely from my stash!  I also love the bright colors of the zoo animals with the multi-colored zebra print log cabin around them.  One of the great things about baby quilts is that the simplest quilts to piece together can still be interesting and fun!  It is all about fabric selection, which is one of my favorite steps of making a quilt. 

I did all of the quilting on this by hand, with quilting in the ditch around each animal block, in the ditch around the zebra-print log cabin, and then two larger squares in the bright blue sashing.  Doing long straight lines like this takes no time, especially with a smaller baby quilt, and is the perfect thing to do while watching a movie or TV.



The final fun element of this quilt was a happy coincidence.  I had pieced the whole top when I learned that the baby's nursery was an alligator theme!  By chance I had included a square with a cute alligator in the lower right block.  I love it when a quilt just comes together so perfectly.  Sometimes a quilt just seems meant for the little person who receives it.