County Fair Time!

It was close, but I got a quilt finished for the county fair.  The quilts were due by noon on a Monday, and I finished stitching on the sleeve at about 11:45 am.  In truth, it I wasn't as done as I had hoped - there is no quilting in one of the inner borders - but it was done enough.  Turns out, it was done enough to win a second place ribbon in the small/medium hand quilted category.  Woo hoo!

I enter a quilt every year in part for the objective, impartial feedback.  For years, I've been "dinged" for my binding not having square enough corners or plump enough or whatever.  This year I got highest marks for my binding, with "Binding is well executed" underlined twice.  That made me so happy!!  The devil is in the details! 

Thank goodness for the fair, it gives me a hard and fast deadline to help me with my finishes.  This quilt is the one I chose to give to a friend of mine's baby, and even though the baby was born in April, I was still struggling to finish.  I swear, the closer I get to finishing a quilt, the slower I move.  Anyway, I sent a photo of the finished quilt to my friend, and she and her family went to visit it at the fair this week.  She sent back this wonderful photo of her husband and her baby checking it out.  I love giving quilts to people who will both appreciate and use them!

This baby has the most wonderful parents!  I'm so glad to have them all in my life.

 I also love going to quilt shows.  The talent is so inspiring!  But I noticed that what draws me to a quilt is rarely that which makes it a ribbon winner.  I took photos of some of my favorites, and most have no ribbons, and those that do aren't the blue ribbon winners.  It is pretty obvious what attracts me when you look through these photos - lots of colors and fabrics.

Rarely am I drawn to batiks, but this little quilt SINGS to me!

Scrapalicious!!

This quilt is ENORMOUS!  So simple, yet so striking.

This was one of our retreat projects.  I love these blocks set on point.

Not my usual quilt preference, but this little beauty called out to me.

I feel like I am underwater with those fish!

I could happily while away the afternoon on that porch, quilting or knitting with that view!

Again, not my usual style, but just neat!

I love miniatures.  And scraps. Again, simple, but I love it!

Stunning, right? I see a colorwash quilt in my future.

Whimsy makes me happy.  The fact that she pieced and appliqued the back also makes me happy.

Just looking at these makes me want to run down to the sewing room and start creating.  But first things first.  I've been commissioned to make 2 pair of baby booties for a woman's grandsons who are about to be christened.

One down, three to go.

Definition of a baby quilt

Babies are everywhere around me these days.  Two of my local friends just had babies.  My younger sister just discovered that she is pregnant.  And last week I received a text from another friend that she is having a baby, too!  You know what that means, right?  BABY QUILTS!!!

Part of me wants to use quilts that I've already started rather than start new quilts.  I have so many UFOs that it is embarrassing.  But what makes a quilt a baby quilt?  The size?  The colors?  The pattern?  I pulled out some of my current and not-so-current projects to see what I have to work with. First, there's the blue quilt I started this week.  I've got 30 of the 50 blocks done.  It should be 50" square, or I can make it 40" x 60".  Which size would be more useful?  Which will look better?  We'll have to see.  Would this work as a baby quilt?

I started this scrappy log cabin thinking it would be a baby quilt, but then had second thoughts.  What do you think - would this work as a baby quilt?

I've got many more blocks of this version of Bonnie Hunter's Virginia Bound than I thought.  I could finish a baby top in an evening from these.  But I kinda had my eye on this one for myself...

These bright blocks Summer Breeze would make a nice baby quilt, don't you think?  The only problem is, I only have one completed block and two  nearly completed blocks.  There would be a lot of work for me to get this one finished up, but at least I had the foresight to keep the fabrics together with the blocks so I didn't use them I something else.

I've got a bunch of these I Spy blocks I've been making from novelty fabrics that come into my possession.  I guess that is always an option, but the thought of working on this doesn't excite me right now.

Maybe my flannel buzz saw blocks?  Flannel would be so soft and cozy for a baby!  But where ARE my flannel buzz saw blocks? Uh oh, UFO missing!!  It's probably for the best - I doubt I want to work with flannel during these warmer months, anyway.  Hopefully it will turn up before fall...

But look what I DID find!  I'd already started quilting this one, so I'm making an Executive Decision and declaring this a baby quilt!  It has just been bumped up to the top of my hand quilting list.

Any thoughts or comments?  I'd love to know how you approach making baby quilts.

Can you tell?

The shirt stripe box quilt made from my MIL's quilt is getting bigger every day, so I needed to clear my design wall to make room.  An inner border, a pieced border and an outer border later, and this Spiral Log Cabin quilt was ready to come off the wall and into the "to be quilted" pile.

I LOVE IT!  It is 51" square.  Why did it take me so long to finish it, you ask?  Ah, the usual lament of the scrap quilter - I ran out of my background fabric.  I searched locally for more, but to no avail.  But I found another fabric that was close enough for me.  Can you tell that the background in the borders is different than the background in the blocks?  Take a closer look...

But you know what?  I don't care.  I've said it before, but the first quilting book I read, and the one that has had the greatest impact on me, is Roberta Horton's Scrap Quilts: The Art of Making Do. 

Do you have a book that has helped you to define your approach to quilting?

And back to the shirt stripe box quilt - it wasn't quite speaking to me until I turned the blocks on point.  BINGO!  This, I love!

As if that weren't enough sewing, I also sewed the binding onto the front of the last of the Hurricane Sandy Quilts that I have quilted.  Now to just have some waiting time to sew down the back.

The other thing I did this weekend was set up a website for the Quilt Camp for kids that I'll be running this summer just before my shop opens its doors to the public.  I put the link out on an announcement email at the University today and already got 4 emails from interested parties.  After work today, I printed out my corresponding brochure with the little tear off slips at the bottom and posted them in 8 or 9 places around town.  I am SO EXCITED about all this!  Can you tell?

A perfect afternoon

After a whirlwind week at work, I was thrilled to have an afternoon and evening with no prior obligations.  I spent time on the porch in the sun and breeze, finishing up the hand quilting on the rainbow rail fence.  This weekend, I hope to put the binding on and start on the quilt for the second twin.

Then I spent some time playing ball with my son.  I think the game is supposed to be called "Catch", but for us, it is more like "Throw and Chase."

As the temperatures cooled, I retreated inside to finish up making the blocks on my scrappy spiral log cabin baby quilt.  This one doesn't have a recipient, but it is taking up space on my design wall, so I wanted to finish it up.  The blocks aren't sewn together yet, but I like the way it is turning out.

Taking action - wanna help?

EDITED 11/3/12 - Just a note, if you are a no-reply commenter, I can't send you my mailing address.  If you haven't heard from me, that is why - I have already emailed everyone that I could get in touch with, and have tracked some people down through blogs.    I can be emailed at ehutchinson@wlu.edu, and I'll get my mailing address out to you all.  Thanks so much!

While my kids were home from school on Tuesday, enjoying the reprieve that Hurricane Sandy afforded us here in Virginia, I got started on an idea for a baby quilt.  I wanted to make a spiral log cabin like I had seen on Beth's blog, but I was wondering if it could be done with some of my pre-cut 2" squares that are overflowing their tin.  In no time at all, I had four 9.5" blocks to play with.  It turns out, I like Beth's better, but I can do something with these...

Then I went upstairs on turned on the TV.  Sandy may have given us a reprieve, but she bashed the heck out of our friends north of us.  The images on the screen horrified and haunted me.  My first job after college was in NYC.  My first date with my now-husband was on the Jersey Shore.  He surprised me with a trip to Atlantic City for my 22nd birthday.  The first home that we bought together was in Hoboken, NJ.  All these places that played such a significant role in my past were cold and dark and underwater.  People were were losing their belongings, their homes, their lives.

I can't sit by and do nothing.  I'll donate money, to be sure, but I'm going to turn my sewing room into a sweatshop these next couple of weeks and donate some quilts, too.  My program with the school kids doesn't start until November 12, so I have a week and a half to concentrate on making quilt tops.

Do you want to help?  I wanted to make big block quilts, something interesting but simple.  I saw the disappearing 4-patch online recently, so that's what I chose to make.  One block takes me about 10 minutes to make, including the cutting and pressing.  If you want to make a block to send to me,   leave a comment and I'll send you my mailing address.  I will put the quilt tops together and either find someone to machine quit them or (gulp) machine quilt them myself.  We can't help everyone, but together, we can make a small difference in the lives of some.

Block guidelines:

Choose two fabrics: a multi-color FLORAL and a coordinating fabric that provides good contrast to the floral and reads as a solid.  Cut two 7" squares from each fabric.  Sew into a 4-patch.

Press the 4-patch, and then using a long ruler, make four cuts on the 4-patch, one at 1.5" to each side of the center seams.  Do not move your fabric after each cut; either rotate the cutting mat after each cut, or rotate yourself around the mat.  Once cut, you should have this:

Granted, I moved them a little bit so you could see where the cuts are. 

Move only the skinny center pieces from each side clockwise one space (musical chairs for fabric). It should now look like this:

Sew into rows and then into a 9-patch.

Your final block should be 12.5".  Don't bother to trim your block to size, send them to me as is and I will trim them all to the same size together.  This is a block that is pretty forgiving - when trimmed, you don't lose the integrity of the block.

Thanks so much for considering helping out.  I know that a subconscious reason for wanting to help is to ease this feeling of helplessness that I have as I think about what my fellow citizens are going through. But is that such a bad thing if, through the easing of my own discomfort, I bring comfort to others?

“Life's most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?” - Martin Luther King, Jr. “Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us every day.” - Sally Koch