Summer Coins

I got inspired by the baby coin quilt recipe over at Moda Bakeshop at decided to try one of my own. About the same time Connecting Threads sent out a nice update about one of their new collections. The "Sip of Summer" line looked just like the kind of thing I needed to see in the depths of winter. And I had a gift certificate left over from Christmas. Clearly fate was speaking to me.

I futzed some of the original measurements to get to what I needed, but the concept is the same. Here it is all laid out on the Emergency Backup Design Wall/Primary Basting Surface/Living Room Floor. See, don't those colors just look so happy??

Plus! It gave me a chance to flex my new freemotion foot. I got lots of hairballs and lots of eyelashes but I also got some good learning points. Like, for your first quilt don't pick a design that stops and starts all over the place, you're just asking to accidentally get it knotted around your rings.

Also, and this was the important lesson: You can joke about sewing through your thumb all you want, but when you *actually* sew through your thumb? It's time to go to bed.

Here's the mostly-finished product out for a field trip on my office conference table. It's casually draped over the edge but don't let that fool you, it's nervous and just trying to look cool.

Another first, my first pieced back! I wanted to finish it off in a yellow (my favorite color) but the fabric I had was only 45". So I put in a row of strips leftover from the front. I LOVE the result. I was doing the hand part of the binding at work. One of my co-workers came around the corner and said "Oh! I saw the blanket and I thought you were asleep back here!" Hee!

Strawberry Parfait: The saga begins

I started working on a quilt just for me. I fell in love with a red and white HST up at (I think) Cluck Cluck Sew and I thought "I must have that." Coincidentally I had grabbed a FQ pack from my quilt shop earlier in the year. So I sat down and got to work.

Here are all the white squares all measured, marked, and ready to go.

God bless chain piecing.

Ahhh! Pile up on I-95! Call the - oh wait.. a little tug from behind and all is well.

The bad part about HST? Squaring up every. single. one. At this point the quilt very nearly ended up being about 3 squares wide and about 2 squares tall. Just because I hate squaring up so much.

Dad's quilt

Click here to view these pictures larger

This quilt was a Christmas present for my father. My second quilt ever, so I stuck with paper piecing and hand quilting. I loved it when it was finished. It's got a nice masculine color combination and it's very very soft. He uses it every night when he's watching TV, you can't ask for more than that!

Butterfly quilt

Click here to view these pictures larger

My very very first quilt. I wanted to start small and easy, even though I wanted to dive right into some thing really hard. I chose the smart way and did this simple square-in-a-square paper pieced design. I fussy-cut the butterflies before I even knew what fussy-cutting was. It's backed with a super soft muslin and hand-quilted with a simple outline stitch. I did an outline of the butterflies as well and I think it really helps them *pop* off the quilt.

It ended up being a Christmas gift for my mother-in-law who loves and cherishes handmade things. I said it was for my daughter to use when she came to Camp Grandma and I think MIL was quite pleased. A success, yay!