My living room is all kinds of nautical.

My nautical quilt is done. As are two new nautical pillows.

I started the quilt probably two months ago, when we were still in California. In the process of quilting it, I sucked. I figured that the best way to go about it would be to start from the corner and quilt my way to the middle, then flip it and start from the opposite corner. This works if you've made a good, well-pinned quilt sandwich. I did not. I ended up with about an inch of extra fabric in the middle. So I put the quilt in a box, put that box in another box and mailed the box to myself. When it arrived... no just kidding, I packed it in the Uhaul. My new sewing room is quite a bit smaller than my old one, so I'm trying to make a solid effort to not have UFOs around, because they take up space, so I put in some time with my seam ripper and took out quite a bit of the quilting, then re-pinned and did it all again. I bound the quilt in some Coral and Salmon Kona with a bit of whale fabric mixed in, just for funsies.

The quilted pillow I also started in CA, when I was supposed to be packing my craft room. I used four colors of blue and some white to make four panels, then sewed them together with the darkest blue towards the middle. I did what I think is called matchstick quilting? Or is that even closer together than what I did? Regardless, it took forever to quilt this thing. Can't imagine doing it on a whole quilt. So I finished the pillow front in CA, then did the rest here in Delaware. I put in an invisible zipper in both pillows. AND I finished the seam allowances nicely on the inside. I'm trying really hard to become a legit seamstress who makes nice things.

That sailboat pillow? First of all, love. Got it at Joann's in the home decor section. I have enough fabric left to make at least one more pillow, which I may or may not do... because I was thinking shorts. Would that be too much?  

The necessity of handmade gifts.

I have some sort of psychological problem that does not allow me to buy gifts, ever. Under no circumstances may I buy a gift. Even if I'm under a huge time crunch, or have eleventy-million other things to do, nope! Cannot buy anything. Must make something.

Case in point. Wedding gift. Two oven mitts and two hot pads.

I actually really enjoyed making these. I order a lot of fabric on Etsy, and it often comes with a little pack of a few 2" by 3" or 3" by 3" squares of different fabric. I just kept tossing them in my scrap bin, not knowing what to do with such little pieces of fabric. Fortuitously, I pulled out my scrap bin (which really, was getting out of hand, and something needed to happen with it) to make this set.

The bride is an ocean lover, and an ecologist, so I was thinking blue and green would be the way to go, and I knew I had a lot of blue and green scraps. In my search I found a bunch of these little squares that totally worked with my color scheme, so I included them in the patchwork. I love it. The little pieces of unique fabric are so cool. And they add a great variety to the oven mitts. I especially love the blue glitter crown fabric. I might have to buy some yardage of that. Which when you think about it, is surely why the Etsy sellers include little pieces with your order... Hmm. They got me.

Girly-Girl.

Yet another baby shower gift. I was looking through my pregnant friend's baby registry, and noticed she'd registered for a ton of jungle-themed baby stuff. Super cute. So I bought 2 yards of this fabric:

(Jungle Bungle by Moda)

My thinking was that this would be the back, and an amazing ombre quilt from the book We Love Color would be the front. (If you go to that Amazon link and click "look inside book", it's the first quilt shown.) So I ordered like 12 different fat quarters of Kona Solids in pinks and purples, and when I got all the fabric and piled it up, I realized that there is no pink OR purple in the jungle fabric, and that they in fact looked awful together. Luckily, I had a couple of yards of a pretty dahlia-printed quilter's flannel that totally went with the pinks and purples. So I forged ahead. By that, I mean I procrastinated until literally the morning before the shower, and I made the whole thing in one day. Like 9 am to 2 pm. It was a quilting marathon. 

I love it. I want to make a big one for me. I think it turned out perfectly. Except, um, the quilting. Clearly, straight lines are not my forte. 

I bound it in the same fabric as the backing, something I'd never done before. I really love the way it looks. I also figured that I didn't have time to hand-sew the binding down, like I usually do, so I used some Steam-a-Seam (like double stick tape, but for fabric) to stick the binding to the backside, then machine-stitched it down. It's certainly not perfect, but it saved a ton of time and my hands. I'm getting old and it's getting harder to hand-sew. Boo. I'm not even that old.

Gratuitous close-up.

So now the question is what to do with that adorable jungle fabric? And when am I gonna have time to make one for me?

Chevron and Cherries.

I'm going nuts not knowing if I'm going to have a niece or nephew come September. Luckily, my sister is kind of streamlining things- if it's a boy, the baby's room will be green and gray, if it's a girl: orange and gray. She's decided that it's definitely a girl, and my brother-in-law is for sure that it's a boy. I sort of split the difference and went with gray front, girly back, and green binding. Ha!

I bought an issue of Quilty on a whim at Michael's a while ago. There are several quilts in the magazine that I intend to make, but one in particular caught my eye: Chevron. I thought that it would look great in white and gray patterns. I went through my fabric collection and found a bunch of gray, gray print, and black and white print that I thought would work, and luckily, I had enough for a baby sized quilt. Aside: I love having a fabric stash big enough to be able to do things like this. This is my first time actually using a quilt pattern. It's nice to not have to figure out measurements on your own.

Here's the back: it's cherry-printed quilter's flannel.

I quilted it really simply with straight lines. This is what the pattern suggested and I decided to roll with it.

For the binding, I pieced a light green and a dark green together randomly. I also made actual bias-binding this time because it's for a baby, and I'm hoping it will get used and spit up on and washed a lot.

Now I just need to make a label and mail it off!

I love foxes.

Recently, I've had a moderate obsession with foxes. I enjoy forest creatures in general, but there's just something about foxes that is extra good. I even knitted this fox stole, which I'm unsure I'll be brave enough to actually wear in public, but that's another post entirely. So when I saw the Ed Emberley "Happy Drawing" forest friends fabric on Etsy a while back, I knew that I had to own some of it. Then we got invited to a baby shower, so now there is a forest friends baby quilt. 

I did wonky log cabin squares (which I wish were either wonkier or more perfect, because they are just wonky enough to look unintentional. oops.) with the forest fabric, that orange squiggly fabric that is also from the Happy Drawing line, and some Kona solids- light gray, charcoal, bright green, dark green, and a macaroni and cheese color. I think this is the most piecing I've done for a quilt so far- getting all those squares to fit together in a manner I found pleasing required SO MANY little white rectangles and squares. After making this quilt, I understand the need for a design wall. I had the blocks taped to my closet doors as I was arranging, which is just not a good solution, because then I couldn't open the closet.

I did a nature-inspired quilting pattern that is something I frequently doodle when I'm in meetings and such. Unfortunately, it got totally obscured when I washed the quilt. That made me upset, because it took FOREVER, and I was working on it literally up to the minute we left for the shower. It's sort of visible on the back:

But sort of not really.

It was a good lesson to learn. Won't do such a complicated quilting pattern on this type of quilt again. As my mom says, my 478th quilt is just practice for my 479th. Although with me it's more like my 6th is just practice for my 7th. I started making some more of the log cabin blocks to make another of these quilts (to be put in my Etsy store), and I think I will do something way simpler with the quilting, like concentric squares, or even straight lines. Overall, I like.

And another quilt.

Last week, a friend of mine was over, and we were hanging out in the living room, where I have a ladder-style quilt rack for my growing collection. He was like, "Where'd you get those quilts, your grandma?" Oh.... sadface. Whatever, quilting is cool. Especially when it's giant houndstooths. Houndsteeth? 

This one is lap-sized, and it was an accident. I was making new pillows for my living room, and I thought, wouldn't it be cool if one of them was quilty? So I decided on houndstooth, cut out the pieces, got them all sewn together, and realized that just one houndstooth was about 20" square. This was too big for a pillow.

So I thought, eh, what the heck, let's make a quilt. I had exactly enough of the brown patterned fabric to make 9 houndstooths, so I put them in the middle and made it really punchy and graphic. Found this perfect fabric for the back: it's tiny houndstooths!

This was only the second free-motion quilt I've made. I did a paisley pattern. It's a little hard to see because I did white thread on white fabric. I think it hides mistakes better. 

I think if I did it again, I'd do a colored binding to make it a little more fun. Houndstooth is kind of an old man print, but a fun colored binding would make it younger. This is not a huge problem for me, since I apparently only have old people hobbies. At least I end up with useful things, right? It's just a bonus that they're pretty.

New Fixation: Quilting.

Not that I will ever not love knitting best... but I cannot get enough of modern quilts. I can't wait to get home from work most days so I can hang out in my sewing room and quilt. I think I've read every modern quilting blog out there. I am in love. Here's a modern baby quilt I made this past weekend.

It's "improvisationally pieced", which means I just made random, not-straight strips and sewed them together in a manner I found pleasing. The only patterned fabric is the orange polka dot one; the rest, including the back, is all solids. It's more modern that way, dontchathink?

Mostly, I made this quilt because a) I wanted a quick, instant-gratification project, and b) because I'm trying to get better at free-motion quilting. I did a pebble pattern for most of this one, and I love it. I did some triangles coming out of each side just to break it up a bit.

The back:

Baby quilts are so satisfyingly quick. I wish I knew a dozen babies. But I only know one, and hopefully I can get this quilt to them before they read this post. If not, surprise! There's a quilt coming your way!