Day & Night baby quilt delivered

Our first grandson is here!  Even though I was counting on him waiting till my birthday to be born and be my birthday buddy, we're thrilled that Brian Thomas has made his appearance on the 17th and everything is going great.  I just got pictures of him with his quilt that I made him.

I put minky fabric on the back to make it super soft then hand quilted it.  I still have to quilt in the big stitch mode, but that worked out just fine for this quilt. 

The Day & Night pattern gives you 3 quilts in one.  The main quilt above, and 2 smaller quilts with the leftover pieces after you've cut the first pattern.  I made DGD a quilt for her dolly to match her little brother's quilt.  Here she decided that little B needed to cover up - so she went and got her dolly blanket to put over him.  I think this is just adorable!! 

The baby quilt has warm and white batting.  The dolly quilt has no batting. 

Fractured Sky

Close-up of sky:

There was questions about how I created the sky for this quilt.  I got the idea from a method shown on You tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYkIh_fsyiE
Cut out several 14" x 14" pieces out of 4 different fabrics for the sky and stacked them up together.  Then I cut an off kilter line across those squares. 

*Take on piece off the right side stack and put it on the bottom of that stack.  Take these two stacks to the sewing machine and start sewing the top piece from each stack back together and press the seams.    Stack them all together again and make another cut.  (Repeat from * until you get the look you want.)

In the end, I ended up adding little scraps here and there, cutting some of the 'fractured blocks into strips, and just played around till I was happy with all the chunks on the design wall.  Then I sewed them up and attached them to the rows of mountiain fabrics.

While this method isn't something I'll likely do again real soon, I like the effect it gave to the sky over the original piece of all sky fabric.

(Click on any of these pictures to view them in a large size.)

Virginia Quilt fabric is now a Quilt Top

     The fabric we bought nearly 2 years ago is finally made into a quilt top!!  I don't know yet how I will have it quilted, or if I will do that myself either by hand or machine, but at least I've got it this far.  My original post about these fabrics was back at:  http://mudpotter.blogspot.com/2008/07/these-are-prints-dh-and-i-picked-up.html
     May of 2009 when hubby and I drove to Virginia to meet the new grand-daughter, we were very impressed with the endless mountains.  Once in Virginia we found a quilt shop and began picking out fabrics to commemorate our trip.  All of the greens/browns in the main part of the quilt were bought in that Virginia quilt shop.  Since then I found the border print that I knew would be perfect for finishing off the frame of the quilt.  One of the blue sky fabrics was also purchase at that quilt shop, but I've since added a couple of others so I could create the broken, chopped up sky that I wanted to do.
     I learned several things with this quilt.  I learned that the ruler that I thought was a true 60 degree triangle really wasn't and I had to be careful about how I placed them in the quilt.  I didn't realize this at first and forgot a couple times along the way, so had to take out several seams before I got it right.  I also learned that the overall look of the inspiration quilt wouldn't be achieved because it incorporated a lot more lights intermixed with the darks to give the effect it had.   I also learned that sewing when my shoulders hurt or I was just tired wasn't usually very productive.
     We specifically picked out one fabric with the little white flowers, because we kept seeing lots of little white flowers along the roadside.   If you click on the above picture, you can see the larger version of the above picture.

I-Spy Finished and Delivered

This is the quilt started by on http://mudpotter.blogspot.com/2009/04/i-spy-hannah.html

DD# 2 let me know it got to the birthday girl on time with these pictures and comments.

"I-Spy" quilt from Grandma Schmitz.(That's me!) If you look closely, you will notice that each square has a match - this is so she can play games. She has already decided her favorite squares are the ELEPHANTS!

 

She seems to be looking it over pretty good.

Within a few minutes, she wanted her babies to share the blanket with her. 

 

Then we wrapped the babies (and bear) up. The Winnie the Pooh fabric is on the back of the quilt. It is beautiful and soft!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANNAH KAY!!! 

Brittney's quilt for Alyssa

My Granddaughter Brittney has been wanting to make a quilt for her little sister for a while now.  We've even had the fabric bought for a couple of months.  We've had the darndest time getting a sewing machine for Britt to work on the project at home, or getting her over to G&G's to work on it.

The other day, Britt's little sis Alyssa was at the store with her Mom and spotted this Sponge Bob fabric.  She was actually hugging the bolt of fabric till her Mom bought her some to hold for herself!  When I heard this, I had to tell her that was the exact same fabric Britt had picked out.

 

Here's another view - Alyssa had just been woke up from her nap and it was a little hard getting a good picture of the both of them.

And matching dolly quilt

Here's another shot of the new baby quilt top - along with the complimentary dolly quilt. Granddaughter will have a new quilt for her doll when Mommy and Daddy have the new little brother wrapped up in his quilt!!

Now I 'just' have to get them quilted, put the binding on, and get them to Virginia in time for the baby's arrival. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

New Baby Quilt

I've got a new grand-baby coming, and I got busy making a quilt for him! While DD#2 was home for Christmas she approved the new quilt pattern I'd gotten and wanted to try from Quilt in a Day called Day and Night.

She picked out the colors, and I got to pick out the fabric. You can see in the close-up below that the blue / black fabric looks almost like water, and I think the yellow / gold secondary fabric compliments it nicely. I've even got the binding all ready for when it comes back from the quilter.

While both of these fabrics came from the nearby Wally World - they are both very nice fabrics that worked up really nicely. I know some quilters wouldn't dream of putting 'cheap' fabric in a quilt, this pre-washed very nicely, sewed up just great, and it just doesn't make sense to me to spend $8-$10 for Quilt Shop fabric when you really can find good quality material like these for so much less. I figured with the 5 yards I bought for this and an upcoming project, I saved a good $25 - $30!!


I will agree that not all the fabrics found at discount stores are quilt quality, if you look closely, buy smart and check it by pre-washing and evaluating the fabric along the way, you can make some good smart decisions when it comes to buying fabric.

I'm heading back to the sewing room to work on the second project for this fabric. Stay tuned!!!

Christmas Tree Wall Hanging

Once again I saw something on someone's blog, maybe it was a pattern, or someone's picture on a quilting board, but I saved a picture of a primitive Christmas tree that I really liked. I I kept thinking about it - and the other day I decided I wanted to make it - NOW!! I'm impulsive like that..... to the right is the inspiration piece.



I discovered it was a tree in a Leisure Arts book of wall hangings. Since I didn't have time to get the book and get the wall hanging done, I decided to do my own style.

This is 30 X 11 inches. I first took a 26 X 7 inch piece of muslin and layered it over batting and muslin backing. I then sewed down 2.5 inch strips of the border fabric, flipping and pressing each piece in turn. This secured all 3 layers together.
Next I picked out several green pieces of scrap and applied Wonder-Under to each of the wrong sides. With a pair of scissors I cut random 'layers' of each and began layering them on the top. I also had a piece of tone on tone brown that I used for the trunk and bits in between the branch layers. I found a bit of gold to use for the star.


Once I had everything where I wanted them, I removed the paper backing of the fusible and fused it all down.


Simple and quick zig-zag machine quilting secured the pieces and accented the edges. My machine skipped and wandered in a couple of places but I left it - adding to the prim look of the piece.



I used gold metalic thread around the star.
Two bias strips of the border fabric were used in the upper corners of the back so it could hang easily.
Binding was cut and applied and it was finished!

Though I like how it turned out - I want to change it up some too. I think I might make a companion piece or two with some of the remaining pieces....maybe try to get closer to the inspiration piece.  Those will have to wait for now though....I've put off cleaning the house too long already!!

I couldn't help myself when I noticed all the small scraps of the above project - so I began cutting them into little pie shaped pieces and assembled them on another panel of muslin, fused, satin stitched them down and echo quilted them for this cute little mini forest.  It became a gift to my twin.

Christmas Table Topper

I saw a show from Quilt in a day for a small wall hanging. Later as I was looking through some of my Christmas fabrics I found some Santa fabric that just called to me to be fussy cut. This is the result.

Most of it is machine quilted in the Quilt as you go style with gold metalic stitches through the 4-patches and criss-crossed in the middle square.

There are 9 pieces that were layered and quilted, then all were put together with the green sashing/joining strips. It was super easy to do. The 4 patches were made first - with the decorative stitches along the seam lines creating the quilting.

The Santa squares were centered on top of the batting and backing and the white frame was added via the stitch and flip method, then the corner triangles were added. I lost a tiny bit of the points on the frames, so next time I will make the frames a bit smaller to prevent this.

I think it needs a bit more quilting to help it lay good and flat so I will probably add some hand quilting too - but later. I'm thinking some hand quilting on the white frames around each Santa, and maybe even some squares inside each of the 4-patches.

12 days of Christmas

The 12 days of Christmas was an early tradition in my hubby's and our family. At the time, we had aunts and uncles enough that we each drew a name out of the hat and that was to be our part in singing "The 12 days of Christmas". Ages ranged from the 70's down to our youngest who then was about 6 or 8 years old. We had a lot of laughs as Aunt Eleanor, Uncle Buddy, or our young ones would miss their cue for their part, or even forget their part all-together. But each year we made it through and were only then rewarded with being able to open our gifts.


When I discovered that Nancy Halvorsen had designed this panel - well I knew I had to have it to remind me of our past tradition.

I am gradually embellishing the panels with crystals, beads, buttons and stitching, and imagine each year (for a while anyway) will be adding to this panel.

I have since discovered that Shelly Rasche has also designed a panel.  I may have to try to find that one as well.