Tag Archives: baby quilt

April Goal {ALYoF}

April 6, 2015 kittywilkin 14 Comments

When I first decided to participate in this year’s A Lovely Year of Finishes (ALYoF), I sketched out a general plan of projects and works in progress for the year. April, being my birthday month, was designated “selfish sewing month” and I had planned to work on–or finish!–the quilt I am making just for me. But lo, as life goes, other projects have due dates and take precedence over selfish sewing. My sister-in-law is expecting her first child, a daughter, and her baby shower is at the end of April. This bumps her baby quilt to the top of the pile. So far, all I’ve done is pull fabrics from my stash to begin planning this quilt.

I’m planning to make a baby quilt using a giant pink Hazel Hedgehog with a teal background. My sister-in-law is all about pink… I mean ALL about pink… so the pink heavy Hazel will be perfect for her.
Since I have yet to even begin this project, I’m hoping to finish just the quilt top by the end of April. I’m taking it easy on myself for a change, with a hopefully easily attainable goal. She isn’t due until June, so I’m thinking a quilt top will be an acceptable gift to present at her shower, and quilting and finishing should be attainable before my baby joins us sometime in May, or maybe June.

I haven’t fully decided on pink placement for this quilt yet. I’m torn between using the light pink as the face, the grey as the body, and then a brighter pink (or combination of brighter pinks) for the hair OR using the light pink for the face, the darker pink solid for the body and an even darker pink (maybe the bottom one, or perhaps a mix of the middle two pinks) for the hair.

I like the look of the grey mixed in, but I’m not sure if that’s just my style preferences leaking in, or if it really would look better with the grey body. If you haven’t seen a Hazel Hedgehog, here are a lot of great examples made during Angie at Gnome Angel’s Hazel Hedgehog Quilt Along held last month. While the Quilt Along has ended, there is a ton of great inspiration there! What would you do with your pink Hazel?

I’m linking up with the April Goal Setting Party with ALYoF, and with Monday Makers.

Design, Quilting

Works in Progress: Star Crazy & Baby Plus, Take 2

October 15, 2014 kittywilkin 7 Comments

Most of my sewing projects fall into two main categories: gifts for friends and family, or a new pattern that needs to get out of my head and into reality. This past week, I’ve been working on projects that don’t fall into either of those categories!

Star Crazy Quilt

Many months ago, I did something crazy. I started a quilt just for me! I made some progress on the quilt, and then it got tucked away in a corner for a good long time. This past week, I pulled it out again and made some more progress. My Star Crazy quilt is slowly coming together, and I love it!

A few months ago, I made the decision to leave grey fabrics out of the “light” sides of these blocks, but noticed that some of my “lights” still read pretty dark. One of the quilters I follow on IG posted about checking fabric values by turning a photo black and white (if it was you, please let me know so I can give you credit!). Trying this method, you can see that some of my “lights” are indeed quite dark.

star crazy value txt — Note how the light star on the right is noticeably darker than the star on the left.

I’m going to aim to group the darker ones together so that each star is all one value. In making more blocks for this quilt, I’ve also decided that I’m going to be okay if two of the same turquoise prints are next to each other. These are little design details that have been holding me back from forging ahead with this quilt, so I feel a bit relieved that I’ve made the executive decision to let go of avoiding turquoise samesies and aim to match the “dark” lights. Onward with the star crazy!

Baby Plus Quilt, Take 2

I couldn’t help it; I started another Baby Plus Quilt. I had so much fun putting together my Pink & Grey Baby Plus Quilt that I immediately pulled fabric for a second one the day I sent the pink & grey top off for quilting.

fabric pull for baby plus quilt — from @nightquilter on Instagram

The butterfly & flower print was the inspiration piece for this version, and I opted for mostly solids or blenders as my accompanying fabrics. Amazingly, this entire pull was from my stash! After spending a couple hours cutting and playing with layout, I’ve finally begun to sew the rows together. Four (4) down, seven (7) to go.

Design Wall

One last important work in progress from this past week is the final acquisition of a design wall that actually works! You may remember my old design wall (read: epic fail), which I built out of carefully framed 2″x2″ wooden boards, complete with a cross-support beam, and wrapped with white felt. The amount of work that went into building that design wall was inversely proportional to how well it held quilt blocks. In other words, blocks wouldn’t stay on that design wall for more than 2 seconds. I learned from that experience, and this time I bought a $2.99 vinyl tablecloth with a flannel back. The lightest color our local Reny’s had was bright pink, but I realllly wanted to get something to use as a design wall so I bought it. It works SO AMAZINGLY WELL! I apologize for the internet “shouting”, but I am absolutely floored at how well quilt blocks–both solid fabric and already-pieced–stick to that table cloth! It is amazing. Ugly as sin, but amazing!

I’m linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced’s Work in Progress Wednesday.

Quilting

Friday Finish: Pink & Grey Baby Plus Quilt

September 5, 2014 kittywilkin 11 Comments

It’s been a productive sewing week, and with another chunk of uninterrupted sewing time today, I was able to complete the Pink & Grey Baby Plus Quilt I’ve been wanting to finish! I definitely will incorporate more solids into the mix the next time I make a plus quilt, but I am very happy with how this quilt turned out.

My adventures photographing the quilt top were a reminder as to why I really need to buy some washi tape! Blue painters tape does the trick, but doesn’t really add to the aesthetic. Blue bits aside, here are some photographs of my finished flimsy:

I was inspired by Michelle Bartholomew’s quilt photography, especially for her Barn Door Quilt, for this photo shoot locale. My quilt is hanging on the side of our shed, which is not exactly a barn, but the “X” door complements the plus quilt so well, the math geek in me just couldn’t resist. I think the grey in the shed also brings out the grey in the quilt. It was a match that was just waiting to happen.

pink and grey baby plus quilt top finish — I love when seams match perfectly!

Now that the quilt top is complete, it’s all set to go to Stephanie & Michelle in Austin for some longarm quilting. Once Stephanie is finished working her magic, this quilt will be posted for sale in our Late Night Baby Etsy shop. It will be my first contribution, so I’m excited to finally get it finished.

I’m linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday & TGIFF.

Business, Quilting

Work in Progress: Pink & Grey Baby Plus Quilt

September 3, 2014 kittywilkin 9 Comments

This week I’m focusing on finishing my pink & grey baby plus quilt, made with an assortment of Michael Miller It’s a Girl Thing pink & grey prints. I’m so very close to completing the top, with only four more long strips to sew together.

This is my first quilt to be listed for sale in our Late Night Baby Etsy shop, which is primarily run by Michelle & Stephanie, my Late Night Quilter soul sisters. I bought a Michael Miller pink & grey fat quarter bundle over a year ago, since I am totally in love with the color combination. I love grey in general and am typically not a huge pink fan, but together it works so well. When Stephanie, Michelle, and I started talking about opening an Etsy shop in which to sell baby quilts and other sewn items, I was immediately excited to finally make a quilt from this bundle. I added a tiny splash of Moda solids, and if I were to make this quilt again, I think I would add more solids, but overall I’m very happy with how this quilt is turning out.

pink and grey baby plus quilt — I love the guitar prints!

I’m doubly excited because once this top is finished, I will be sending it to Stephanie for longarm quilting.

In case you haven’t heard, Stephanie and Michelle recently joined forces at Late Night Quilter to kick off their longarm quilting and pattern design business. They also released a new, free pattern as part of their kick-off, so go check it out, especially if you love triangles. Visit their post to see some closer details of Stephanie’s awesome quilting. I love the shadow triangles the most, I think, but the movement created by the quilting is awesome and unexpected. I’m definitely excited to send my quilt top off to Stephanie so that she can work her magic. They are offering free batting to all customers in the month of September, too, so if you have some tops you’ve been sitting on, now might be a great chance to get them quilted!

Do you send your quilts to a longarmer, or do you quilt them yourself? So far I’ve quilted all of mine, but I’m silly excited to have my first longarm experience. I’m trying to decide how I want Stephanie to quilt this Plus Baby Quilt. Their design gallery has some great options. What design would you choose? I think I’m leaning toward Retro Revolution…

I’m linking up with WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Quilting

Friday Finish: Lillian’s Baby Quilt

April 11, 2014 kittywilkin 12 Comments

Finally! Over the past few weeks especially, I’ve hinted at this project and have shown little peeks at quilting and piecing details, but now I can finally show you the whole finished quilt!

I began this quilt before little Lillian was born, and my friends didn’t find out the gender in advance, so I worked to choose gender neutral fabrics in creating this quilt. The center square is from a pattern I found in an old quilting magazine (I will link to it when I return to Maine; I don’t have the magazine with me and don’t remember specifics), but I really didn’t like the border suggested in the pattern and after much internal debate decided to design my own. I created the heart cornerstones, and I’m really happy with the mosaic-style cobblestone outer border and how well it frames the quilt.

For the back, I used a flannel fabric similar to the jungle focal panel in the front center square, with a single row of the color cobblestones mirroring the focal panel on the front.

We are down in New Jersey visiting my family, and last weekend my dear friends and recipients of this quilt came down from NY for a visit. We haven’t seen them in nearly–or over–a year! I have been working hard to complete this quilt so that I could gift it in person, and while I came down to the wire, I did it, hand stitching the label the night before their visit.

I’m really happy with the way this quilt turned out, and it is a showcase of many firsts and newly practiced skills, primarily the free motion quilting (FMQ). You can see more about my process in making the quilt, as well as more FMQ detail in my posts Baby FMQ for the Win, Free Motion Quilt-a-thon, A Sensory Adventure with FMQ, and An Unexpected Element. Seriously, the other posts are worth checking out! I’ve only been hinting at it a little, right? hah!

Since it’s a baby quilt and hopefully will see a lot of use and tough love, I opted to machine sew the binding. I also was pressed for time and really wanted to be sure to finish the quilt before departing on our trip. I used the method suggested in Cluck Cluck Sew’s Machine Binding Tutorial. With this method, the binding is sewn to the front of the quilt first, and THEN the back. The final stitching, when done correctly, traces the edge of the quilt right inside the binding, so it looks like part of the quilting. Just like the tutorial promises, most of the time it turned out perfectly:

Stitches trace the edge of the quilt just inside the binding: perfect!

and some of the time, I hiccuped and the stitches ended up on top of the binding:

All in all, I’m very happy with this quilt, and I’m eager to see many baby, toddler, child photos with this quilt getting grayer and grayer in the background! Enough about the quilt; here are some photos from the day, gifting and of course adorable Lillian!

Gifting the quilt and discussing the little details.

I love babies! Lillian was adoring her view of her momma, otherwise I would have been snuggling that girl up close!

My son Max wanted Lillian on his lap, always. He was so very gentle!

Since it’s Friday and this is an epic finish for me, I’m linking up! Click the links below to see many other awesome finishes.

Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday
TGIFF

Free Motion Quilting (FMQ), Quilting

A Sensory Adventure with FMQ

March 25, 2014 kittywilkin 5 Comments

Free motion quilting (FMQ) is an extremely versatile form of quilting, since you can do it in literally ANY pattern. As far as I’ve seen, your only limiting factor while FMQ is your own ability to accurately maneuver the quilt in your sewing machine’s neck space. I have been experimenting with both circular and angular designs, and I feel like I’m improving a bit (but we won’t even talk about the fact that I sewed through my finger on Sunday. Let’s just not go there. But other than that joyously surprising experience, I think my free motiong quilting is getting better!)

Since this quilt is going to a baby, I am trying to use varied quilting patterns to help make rolling around on the quilt a sensory adventure. I hope those adorable little fingers and toes have fun exploring! Here are some of my FMQing so far. The quilt hasn’t been washed or dried yet since I’m still not finished, but hopefully the designs will be even puffier and more visible (and tangible) after a good wash!

The puzzle and pebbles pattern were both suggested by a fellow quilting friend on facebook. Thank you, Jessica Cook! The puzzle design is from CraftGossip.com. The continuous curve meandering pattern was first seen on Oh, Fransson!, one of my favorite quilting blogs. The angular zig zags and pointy paisley patterns were from Leah Day’s amazing Free Motion Quilting Project blog. If you ever need inspiration for free motion quilting patterns, that’s the place to go!

What is your favorite FMQ pattern or design? I would love to see!

See the completed quilt HERE!