Custom Garden Fence

I’m so creative with titles and quilt names, eh?

I had a client come to me because she loved my original garden fence quilt, but wanted it in pinks and purples for her daughter.

After picking out fabrics, off to work I went! It was fun to work with this color palette after some more subdued ones recently. This also followed some outdoor cushions I remade that were in browns…a nice change!
I quilted an all over meandering flower pattern to add a bit more girlyness.

Look how artfully I took this picture, you can’t even tell that my mom is holding it up for me! ;)
The backing is this super cool pink print, and has a bit of a story. I got a fat quarter of this print at the last quilt show I went to, but my fat quarter was the side without the printed selvage…luckily mom got one too, and had the information on hers(ClaireBella by David Textiles), since my client liked the print and wanted it for the back.  Off to google….after quite a bit of searching, I finally found it for purchase in ONE place (The fabric is 2 years old…), and SCORE, it was only $5/yd!!! I got extra :)

All but one of my purples ended up being from Me and My Sister fabric lines. Their shade of purple ended up being just right; the rest of my purples were WAY off; either too pink or too blue. The other purple is from Kate Spain’s Terrain line. The pinks are all over the place though!

This quilt is shipped off and should already be to its new home! Now to finish some baby quilts for all my pregnant friends….why do we tend to have our babies in waves? I have THREE to make before July, and one that needed to be done already so I can ship it off…at least that one is started and should be done soon!

Friday, Monday, pretty close, right?

I ended up with some rush sewing and badly napping kids this week, so I missed my Monday post…
So, here’s the other quilt that I recently finished and added to the shop:

This is the same design as my recent Verna quilts (yes plural, I made a second one of those!). I plan to write a pattern for this one once I find a spare second :)

I used Cosmo Cricket’s Snorkel line for this quilt. The fabric is a couple years old now. The backing is that awesome crossweave-looking print.
Originally, the solid outlining the blocks was going to be white. I even had them all cut and ready to go! But once the strips were together, the white looked AWFUL. The rest of the prints were too light and it made the entire thing look washed out. Not good. So, out came the Kona Cardinal! It breaks and accents the prints MUCH better.

Then, I was going to use the red for binding, but I didn’t have anything left but scraps…off to the store, bought some more! I got it home, and they dye lot was SO DIFFERENT it looked like a completely different color. Well, THAT won’t work….so I consulted my awesome mother, and she recommended a solid aqua. Bingo! I still would have preferred the same red as the other, but the aqua looks pretty good too :)
And that is the story of this little quilt. I was going to use it for my pattern, but I’ve decided to redo it in something a bit bolder for my “cover girl”. Though I really do love the fishes swimming around the border in this one!
This sweet little boy (or girl, I guess!) quilt is up in my shop here.

Really??

I am not a particularly political person; I know it’s an election year, and I might or might not recognize the names of the candidates, but I’m usually not so up to date on the current events. HOWEVER, yesterday I ran across the video of Hilary Rosen accusing Ann Romney, saying, “she’s never worked a day in her life,” because she’s a stay at home mom. If you haven’t seen it, go find it.

SERIOUSLY??

Apparently Ms. Rosen has never chased a 2 year old all day.

Now, I could go on about this at length, but I could never sum up my thoughts on the matter as well as Jenna, over at Mom, the Intern. She wrote exactly how I feel on the matter, and did a fantastic job. Read it.

I have to say that I have the the utmost respect for moms who work, since they have TWO jobs. My own amazing mother has had to work, and still did an excellent job raising me(if I do say so myself). But raising your children is beyond a doubt the hardest job a parent will ever have. And makes you more aware of everything going on, economically and otherwise.

I also found this article: Why Stay-At-Home Moms Should Earn A $115,000 Salary on Forbes yesterday, which I found to be both entertaining and SO TRUE.

Anyways, that’s my little rant. I’ll show you another newly-completed quilt on Monday, deal?

Sooooo Sophie

Ok, let’s see a finished quilt, shall we? When I saw this fabric at my local quilt store (So Sophie, Riley Blake), I knew I had to work with it. So, I grabbed a couple charm packs and went to work!

I decided to keep it simple, both to let the awesome prints shine, and because I was in need of something simple at the time.

Well, months later, I finally got to quilt this thing! I decided to try out a dogwood pattern (a la Oh Fransson’s recent tutorial, though I made mine much larger to fit my big squares). As always when I try a new free motion pattern, I could use some practice, but overall it turned out pretty cool. I like the minimal quilting for a baby quilt, so it will stay nice and soft.

Once again, my in-law’s front yard saves the day for a good place for shooting quilt photos! Someday I will have a front yard….anyways.

I LOVE this stripe for the binding!!! I used the same stripe in the gold/brown colorway for the green/yellow/brown custom quilt in January. It just looks so cool.

Finished size ended up being 34” x 40”. I love making baby quilts, they are so much less stressful than anything bigger. And they take less time, so you still like them by the time you finish, instead of just wishing they were done!

This cute little baby quilt is up in my shop here waiting for a new home.

In other goings-on, the hubs did not get into NCSU for next year, so we don’t have to move cross-country, yay! That was one of those oh bummer, yay moments. So, one way or another, ASU for grad school! Cross your fingers for us that he get into the program he wants! (Already accepted into “backup plan”, still waiting for word on “what he really wants”)

Oh yeah and happy birthday to my brother! Not that he reads this blog, I’m sure, but it’s still his birthday :)

Quilt in Progress and Easter Dresses

Working on a custom garden fence quilt today:

The pinks and purples are fun to work with right now; I haven’t had this color combo in a while. My goal is to get all the blocks put together today. We will see if I manage it or not!

And here’s a look at the girls in their Easter dresses yesterday:

I used the Junebug dress tutorial from Craftiness is not Optional. It was really easy, and turned out super cute, but it is a beast to get those dresses on and off wiggly girls! I also changed up the button size for each of them. The 5/8” buttons were too small for Zoey’s, and while that size would have looked ok for Jocelyn, I couldn’t find any that matched.

I also made their hair flowers. I might have to throw up a tutorial for those some time, because I REALLY like how they turned out(ended up making one for myself and for my mom, too!), even though I was flying by the seat of my pants when I made them :)

Anyways, hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend, and hopefully I will have more time to sew now that it is over! Tee hee

A peek at an unfinished quilt

…and a couple months’ worth of baby pictures! I am, as usual, very behind on posting; I had a couple re-upholstery/remake jobs come up that consumed my free time for the last month or so. No pics of those, since I just wanted them OUT of my house, but here’s this one a month late:

This is also the peek at one of my UFOs. I finished this quilt top for ME before I got pregnant, but things came up and I never got the backing finished. Now maybe I will get time to finish it; I haven’t made a quilt for me in a long time!!

And now another cute baby picture :)

I get to see this cute grin all the time, I love it! And somehow, I ended up with my foot in the corner of ALL the pictures I took…

Oh, and I just posted two new quilts into the shop; I need to blog about them! But if you want to see them before I get to it, check them out :)

I am working on another custom quilt right now – a pink and purple garden fence quilt that is going to be pretty awesome. Pictures as soon as I have something to take a picture of!

Until next time, have a fantastic weekend!