Longarm quilt #88: Baby quilt finished just in time - my own design!

The baby wasn't due til February so I thought I had a little time. Then the ladies at work told me on 1/16 that the shower was 1/27 - aeeeeieiiiiiiii!  I kinda had an idea of what I wanted to do - random rectangles and squares and not symmetrical. So you know what I've been doing the last 2 weekends; and I was madly sewing on the label yesterday afternoon.

The focal fabric is from the Les Monsieurs collection by Tamara Kate kayajoydesigns.com (she has some great stuff!) that I bought a few months ago with no project in mind. I have a hard time finding boy fabric that I like so thought I'd better snap some of this up from hawthornethreads.com.  See, you never know when buying that random fabric that's calling to you is a good idea! I already had the other fabrics in my stash and all the little pieces are from my scrap baskets so I'm proud of reducing my stash.

Here are some closeups of the quilting. I used 3 different thread colors: white, black & teal.

I really like how this section turned out with the sky fabric above the rocketship and the little patchwork section beside it:

For some parts, I used the fabrics as an idea for how to quilt that section.

I used a snuggly flannel for the backing, hobbs 80/20 batting and a teal So Fine thread in the bobbin. I added the blue outside borders after sending a pic to my daughter. She's a wonderful artist and it definitely gave the quilt a warmer feeling for a baby.

Let me know if you have any questions. I learn something from every quilt I make. I'm happy with the quilting, but I'm still learning what thread colors are best. I don't know what color I would have used if I had to stick to just 1. I only used 3 bobbins, but switching the 3 different colors added a lot of extra time and I did stitch in the ditch around all the dark gray sashing before doing the fancy quilting. Could I have gotten away without SID first? Would a long wavy quilting line in the sashing been an okay substitute for SID? I may need to try this design again to see if no SID would work. I am super proud of my design and love how this turned out.

Help I Can't Stop

making fun pillowcases that is. They're a fast, useful project and it's just fun to pick out colors that go together.

What delicious colors! I love how the purple and chartreuse pop. These are for the grandkids.

Had to Have this Fabric!

Isn't this just the cutest Halloween fabric?

 It's call Mona Makes Magic by Alexander Henry. And the cats are great too - so fun!

So they both had to come home with me and become pillowcases:

I did some decorative stitching on the skinny accent piece with glow-in-the-dark thread (how fun is that). This one kinda looks like spiders:

and this one is like the bubbles in the witch's brew:

 

 

Poppa says Grandma steals his pillow, and I had some extra pillows so these are going to their house! 

A lovely fabric find

I took a few days off this week and worked on the flag quilt. Was just supposed to get wide backing fabric,  but look what I found! The colors are awesome and the fabrics are so soft. They washed up beautifully and I can't wait to use them - maybe some lounge pants or something to wear. 

The stripe is by Kaffe Fassett and the solids are by Pepper Cory. I found her blog when I got home with some interesting info about her new peppered cottons fabric collection: peppercory.blogspot.com 

I may need to get every color!

what I did this weekend

A couple quick pillowcases with some cool Halloween fabric. A special person said she loved the skull fabric I was using to make a hotpad so I got some more today.  The bones on the other one glow in the dark. How neat is that?!