Little Tod's Baby Quilt

This weekend I finished and delivered the baby quilt to its recipient and then got to hold him for a few hours!

I backed this with mint green flannel and used a fluffy batting and then tied the quilt. It is very snuggly.

Here is the quilt:

And here is me with the sweetest little bundle of joy!

I love other people's babies.

Rain, rain, go away

I've officially battened down the hatches here at my apartment in preparation for the impending hurricane. I never thought that in my two years in living in central Pennsylvania I would have experienced BOTH an earthquake and a hurricane. Campus canceled all classes after 1 PM today and subsequently all of the graduate students have trickled home. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up some supplies and it was NUTS! I am thankful more now than ever that I have a gas stove.

This weekend, I finally put the hanging sleeve on my snowflake quilt. I hung it up in my dining room even though its ever so slightly wintry looking.

I also have been working on another (yes, another!) scrap project making the lovely flying geese in a circle blocks. I reduced the size of my blocks so the end up at 7 inches. And they use up a lot of the white scraps that I have.

Here's hoping that my power stays on long enough that I can get some sewing done today!

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Twist of Lime

Hello to everyone visiting from the Blogger's Quilt Festival! I'm Alison and I'm a PhD candidate in chemistry by day, and a fabric addict 24-7. I started sewing when I was in elementary school and quilting has become my go-to "therapy" since I started grad school in 2010.

While this quilt has been finished for a month or so, I couldn't resist sharing it again because I love it so much. The color choices are a little bit out of my normal "box" and I was nervous to go in such a bold direction, but I couldn't be happier!

I collected lime green, black, and white fabrics for almost a year and a half before I started cutting for this project because I had such a hard time finding a pattern that I liked. The pattern for this one is from the March 2012 Michigan-Ohio Shop Hop quilt designed by The Quilt Patch in Tecumseh, Michigan.

All of my fabrics are prints: black on white, white on black, green with black and white. My favorite print in this quilt is the green trees fabric from the City Centre Line by Robert Kaufman. While the blocks are simple to put together, the contrast of the alternating courthouse steps and star blocks ends up so beautiful!

I also put together my first pieced and artsy back for this quilt due to the plethora of fabric still left from this project.

Thank you so much for visiting and don't forget to go check out all of the other quilts entered in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Update 11/5/12: Thank you to everyone for nominating me in the "Bed Quilt" category! I was so honored surprised to make it into the top 5! Go here to vote for the finalists!

Quilt Stats
Approximately 72 by 84 inches (twin)
Special Techniques: strip piecing, stack-cut-switch piecing for stars, pieced backing
Quilted: Professional
Pattern: By The Quilt Patch in Tecumseh, Michigan (MI-OH March shop hop quilt pattern)
Categories: Bed Quilt, Professionally Quilted
Entry #164

Christmas Tree Skirt: All Done!

The binding on this one is finished, and I can officially cross off one person off my Christmas list!

It was so much fun to make, I might have to find other people to make tree skirts for.

And I did all the machine quilting myself!! While its not that impressive because its all straight line quilting, I am at least getting some practice with machine quilting.

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts!

WIP Wednesday: Layering

I decided that I am going to use the Olympic Rail Fence quilt top from over the summer for my friend's new little guy. I pieced together some lovely fluffy batting for this one and am going to be looking for some green and white flannel for the backing.

Since that project is on hold until I get to JoAnn, I decided that I should also layer the Civil War Quilt so that Park Ranger Boyfriend eventually gets this quilt before he decides that he wants to study youth culture in the late 1970s instead. (Which won't happen, but I digress)

In doing so, I realized that while my living room is juuuuust big enough to layer and baste a queen sized quilt, it is difficult to do so alone.

Here is my pile of batting where I almost gave up:

Then my dirty dishes and my laptop got used to their full potential:

And finally, I unfolded the quilt ever so carefully.

I was really happy to have this extra batting chillin' in my closet. I didn't even realize how BIG this quilt was until I realized that it covers a LOT more of the queen size batting than I ever thought it would.

Now I need to add off-white hand quilting thread to my shopping list too.

Check out what everyone is up to today at WIP Wednesday:

 

Christmas Tree Skirt Progress

I didn't get the top of the tree skirt all put together on Wednesday like I had hoped, but I did have the pleasure of watching some friends' two little girls after my friend went into labor on Wednesday night! My babysitting skills are still intact and now I need to whip up a boy quilt for a little 7 pound 11 ounce bundle of joy!

I finished it up on Friday night and here it is:

I had 2 yards of a red marble fabric for the back and zig-zagged together some leftover pieces of batting and got everything layered and machine quilted. I quilted diagonal lines through the entire top (forgot to take pictures of it, will do when its finished!) 

Here is it all trimmed into a circle before I cut the center hole and the slit up to the center :

On advice of my mom, I embarked on using continuous bias binding due to all of the curves. I followed this tutorial video and didn't end up with too much left over! Here's my tube-o-bias before I cut it all into strips:

...and here is all of the binding sewn onto the tree skirt:

Hopefully finishing the binding up on this one very, very soon!

Check out what everyone else has been up to this week at Plum and June:

WIP Wednesday: So close, yet so far

Remember how I said I was waiting for my 3 yards of Chocolate Kona to arrive to start working on the top of my argyle quilt?

It arrived....I just can't get it. I forgot to put a note on my door so its living at the leasing office downstairs until I can get it. Which is probably Saturday. Backburner-ed again.

On the tree skirt front, I realized that did not cut enough squares for it! I think. It's hard when you don't know exactly what you're working with. So I added in another lighter fabric.

And now it is 11 blocks by 11 blocks square instead of 10 by 10 and hopefully it won't be too small (again.)

And now I have to sew this thing together like a puzzle because I was too excited previously and had put some of it into four patches that are not lining up now that I added in the extra fabrics. Time to find my seam ripper!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

Stopping Points

This weekend, I didn't end up getting a ton done, but I did manage to get to some significant progress points for a couple projects.

I finished the 10th New York Beauty Block and remade the 3rd one because I wasn't happy with the way the layout. Here they are together:

So now I need to make a final decision about the layout to see how many more blocks (or half blocks...maybe) I will end up needing to make. I'm actually getting to the point of having used up a lot of the fabric that I started with so I'm pretty sure this one will end up as a wall hanging or throw.

I also received the 6 storage boxes that I ordered from Joann that were the one day special this past week because they are the spring colors. I think the colors are fantastic. Four of the boxes are now home to projects in progress and two are full of my scrap fabric. Huzzah for organization!

Tonight I made the final argyle block! Now just to wait for my Chocolate Kona to show up on my doorstep (hopefully tomorrow!) for the setting triangles and spend hours figuring out how to mix up all of the blocks so that the same colors don't end up next to each other.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

Potpourri of projects

I've not really been able to focus on any of my projects that well for the last few days, so I have been jumping between them and doing a lot of Netflix watching on the couch eating meatballs. Judge me.

I also started working on the Christmas tree skirt that I am making for a family friend (can't be more specific than that because they read my blog on occasion!) These are the colors and the blocks all cut out:

Here are all of the blocks chain pieced into pairs!

I'm working on putting a tutorial for this one together once I figure out how big this thing should actually be. I originally was going to make it 45 inches in diameter, but that might be too small. Hopefully figuring that out tonight.

I am making a little bit of progress on my 100 Day Hustle list, so that's important! I had a mini-panic attack because I thought I didn't have any more of the light blue Fairy Frost that is on the back of my blue and white snowflake quilt for a hanging sleeve BUT I found it in a pile on a chair. *sigh of relief*

Now to clean up the rest of the piles on my chairs....not. 

Newest Bee Blocks

When I was working on my Nubee's blocks yesterday, I realized that I never made my own block for last month.

Here are my own September and October blocks:

And here are all of my blocks so far (missing one September block):

I'll have one more set of four blocks coming this month and after that I think I will make a lap quilt with these colors. Hooray!

Happy Sunday and don't forget to sign up for the jelly roll strip swap!

Slow Goings

It's been a busy week for me between Park Ranger boyfriend visiting for nearly 4 days (4 DAYS!!!), work, volunteer schtuff, and just regular life. So sewing has been a little bit on the back burner. I started and finished another New York beauty block, one of the more complicated ones, so it ended up taking two days to just get the paper piecing done. Oh geez oh man.

Here's the finished product:

The October/November Nubees hives were also assigned and I got three of my four blocks done! I used the Card Basket block via Quilter's Cache (modified slightly for simplification).

And now I get to listen to whatever party my neighbors across the hall party it up and resist going to bed at 8 PM today.

Don't forget to sign up for the Jelly Roll strip swap...my blog readers will have the chance to win free shipping!