Friendly Foxes

Apparently I am in love with all things foxy at the moment and have finished my second fox quilt this year!  This quilt has been delivered to its new owner – an absolutely adorable girl that belongs to friends.  We had visited them late in the summer as they were getting ready for their little one to arrive and I noticed that there was as stuffed fox in with the baby items.  At the time they didn’t know if they were having a boy or a girl so I wanted something gender neutral.  I had just been getting ready to make the Fox and Friends quilt for someone else and upon ordering the fabric I also came across the kit for Kona Fox Kits by Sew Fresh Quilts at Mad About Patchwork.  I thought it was cute so decided to give it a try.

I must admit I did not like this quilt as I was putting it together.  I kept adding the leaves and piecing parts and still didn’t like the overall look.  However I am happy the say that once it was quilted and washed that I loved it and was happy that I didn’t through the whole thing in a pile and move onto something else!

I decided to embroider her name onto the tree like someone had carved it.  Then came the quilting, I really wanted to accent the overall design of the quilt and keep the quilting to a minimum (I was working with a minky back and wanted it to stay soft, not to mention I started the quilting with just over a week before to go before we would be delivering the quilt).

I quilted bark on the tree, veins on the leaves and outlined the foxes.  Then filled in the rest with simple straight lines, which gave both the front and back of the quilt a great effect.

The foxes are so cute and friendly even the deer are not afraid!

This is my first finish off my Finish a Long quarter 4 list (found here).  Now I had better get working on those Christmas projects.

Link ups this week: Fabric Tuesday, Sew Cute Tuesday, Lets Be Social

Fox and Friends Finish

A friend needed a quilt for a baby shower present and I had been eying this pattern for a while so it was a great chance to try it out.  I picked up a kit from Mad About Patchwork, the pattern from Sew Fresh Quilts and got to work.  The piecing came together quickly which was great.

The backing fabric is from Picture Pie which I think complements the top nicely.

For quilting I sewed 1/4″ on each side of the diagonal seams to form diamonds.  Then I quilted in the little girl’s name – Noelle.  I like that it is there, but subtle so it doesn’t take away from the racoons and foxes on the front of the quilt.  I love those racoons!

This quilt will be on its way to the new baby this weekend!

Linking up to:

 

Berenstain Star

It seems like I am in the middle of babypalooza right now – everyone is having babies ( and mine is only 5 weeks old) or has close friends having babies.  This means I seem to be making a lot of baby items these days.  The latest finish is heading off to a coworker of my Mom.  The Mom to be grew up reading the Berenstain Bears so it was easy to pick the fabric – the pattern on the other hand took some time to figure out.  Finally upon playing around on the Moda Bakeshop I found a great pattern I loved – Storybook Star.  I do love the incredible number of great free patterns on the Moda Bakeshop and they have great ideas for precuts.

The front uses a charm pack I had from Welcome to Bear Country and the backing is from the second Berenstain line – Bear Country School.  The green dot fabric is from Riley Blake and I love how well it goes with the other fabrics in the charm pack.

The quilt came together quickly and I quilted it straight line stitches inside the star and a simple stipple outside to try and highlight the star.  I love the straight line quilting and would do the entire quilt this way if I ever did it again.

The future owner of this quilt is due to arrive in early August, so I have a few days to figure out what to put on the label before I send it off!  Then I have 2 more baby quilts to make for fall arrivals!

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: Storybook Star

Fabric: Charm squares Welcome to Bear Country by Moda, Kona Ash, Riley Blake dots

Backing: Bear Country School by Moda

Size: 41 x 41″

Link ups:

Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

This is my first finish for the third quarter of the 2014 Finish-a-long (list of projects is here).

Pretty Petals

My local modern quilt guild decided to participate in the Modern Quilt Guild Micheal Miller fabric challenge.  This is the quilt that I made for the challenge.  They provided us with fat eights of 6 fabrics which are the main features in the front of my quilt.  I loved the fabric with the colourful wedges and used that to inspire the start of my design with the stacked wedges.

The back of the quilt was made by piecing the scraps together into a strip and filled with Michael Miller Coral solids.

For the quilting I decided this would be a great time to try a spiral quilting.  I had two designs and after a bit of debating I decided to center the spirals on the fowers on the the front and back of the quilt.

The binding took a little longer than anticipated due to our new arrival, but she makes an adorable quilt model!

Linking up to Finish it up Friday

Baby Breezy

I have been working on another baby quilt and thankfully have this one finished before the deadline!  It is nice to not feel as pressured and coming down the wire to finish this one as the I did with the Celebrate Dr. Seuss quilt last week.  It was great to make such and easy simple quilt.  I love the pattern and had wanted to make it for a while – it was well written and easy to follow, which was great as I am still recovering from exam marking!

For this quilt I collected grey and yellow fabrics over the last 6 months or so then pulled out 6 that I thought went well together to make this quilt.  The baby’s room is done in grey and yellow with an elephant theme, so I tried to pull that into the quilt with the fabrics – including fussy cutting out these cute little elephants for the middle of the squares.

The backing is a super soft cuddle fabric with grey and yellow chevron – it worked perfectly with the front!  The quilting was done using my walking foot and alternating between straight lines 1/4 inch off the seems and a chevron running through the coloured strips to add a little more interest.

The little one who will be receiving this quilt is due June 6th, so I have a little time to breath with this one!  Now to start on the next quilt for the baby due in August – first step is to find a design.

Quilt stats:

Pattern: Breezy from Growing up Modern (also sold individually by Cluck Cluck Sew)

Fabrics: Mix from various places and lines

Backing: Chevron Cuddle fabric

Binding: Kona Medium Grey

Link ups:

Linking up to Needle and Thread Thursday – always a great place for some inspiration!

Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

Celebrate Dr. Seuss

This quilt took me longer than I thought to get finished when I first agreed to make this.  It is a present for someone who is due next week, and although I started this quilt back in January I am only finishing it now.  Thankfully it is now done and it will be on its way to the mom to be this weekend!

I used a pattern from Julie Herman called Celebrate Dr. Seuss.  I wanted a crib sized quilt so I didn’t add the borders, but I still love how it turned out.

The background is Kona Ash, I love the way it makes the white in the squares pop out and hopefully this won’t hold up a little better for a baby than a white background!  I am always nervous with too much white in a baby quilt – I worry about myself using quilts with too much white.

For the back I used another Dr. Seuss print with all the different characters on it.  The recipient of the quilt didn’t know if she was having a boy or girl so I tried to keep things fairly neutral.

Due to time constraints I kept the quilting simple with an overall stipple and machine bound the quilt (I also feel like it is nice and sturdy for kids hauling it around).

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: Celebrate Dr. Seuss by Julie Hermann, published in Love of Quilting Nov/Dec 2010

Fabric: Kona solids  and Dr. Seuss Panel

Binding: Dr. Seuss by Robert Kaufman

Quilting: Stipple on my Juki

Size: 50″x40″

The baby is due to arrive on the 7th, hopefully both Mom and little one enjoy this quilt!  Linking up to Needle and Thread Thursday and Finish it up Friday.

Seuss Stars

Over the summer I found out one of my coworkers was pregnant.  I of course offered to make a quilt for the little one and got to work on planning.  They did not find out the sex of the baby, so I had to go with a gender neutral colour scheme.  Dr. Seuss is my go to for baby quilts anyways, so I just tried to keep away from too much blue and pink with the quilt.

I cut out some squares from a panel and make wonky stars to go around each panel using mostly Dr. Seuss prints I had.  I then put the blocks on the design wall and started to fill in with the background around them until I had it at a size I was happy with.  The top was actually finished a couple of months ago, and then life got busy.  Marking started coming in and before I knew it we were almost through November.  Then I remembered that the due date of this little was in mid December – uh oh.  So amid the end of term marking I basted, quilted and bound this cute little quilt to insure it got to my coworker before her last exam (as I knew she couldn’t leave until then).

The quilting came together quickly with a simple stippling with random stars thrown in.  I also love the contrast of the black and white in the star and binding, hopefully the baby finds it interesting as well!

Thankfully I was able to finish and gift this quilt to her the day before her students wrote the last exam of the semester.

Now that the marking is finished and the quilt is off to the soon to be parents I am crossing my fingers for a Dec. 23rd baby (that is my day in the baby pool!) and looking forward to meeting the little bundle in the New Year.

This is also my second finish for the fourth quarter of the 2013 Finish along!  Yay.

Pods of Seuss

 

I can’t believe it has been almost 2 months since my last post – amazing how time flies when you are busy.  Thankfully I have finished marking finals for the semester, and inputted all my marks.  I finally have some time in my evenings catch up of some sewing and get some blogging in.  Remember this quilt from early this year?  Well I finally found some time to get it finished.  The quilting is a pattern of random squares, and the quilt is backed with a fabric from Connecting Threads.

The quilt top was made with scraps of Dr. Seuss fabric that I had left over from the other quilts I have made over the last year and a half or so.  The pattern is Improv Pods from Elizabeth Hartman’s Craftsy class.

This is also my first finish for the Fourth quarter of the 2013 Finish a Long!  Yay!

Love Quilt

My little brother had a very good friend get married this summer and he asked if I could make them a quilt.  I had this quilt top in my sewing room when he asked, and when he saw it he thought it would be perfect.  So I got to work quilting.  He requested that the quilting have horseshoes in it (was part of their wedding decor), so I did a simple stipple with occasional horseshoes.  The horseshoes are about 4″ in size.

The letters for the smaller words were made using the Refrigerator Magnets pattern from Elizabeth Hartman that I modified to make the letters a little wider.  The LOVE in the middle I drew up my own patterns for.  Each letter in LOVE is 15″ finished!

On the back of the quilt I used a solid brown, then appliqued on a heart with the bride and groom’s names with their wedding date.  When I quilted this part, I kept the heart shape, so you can see the outline of the heart on the front!

I finished off the quilt with a machine binding and it is ready to head off to its new home.

Quilt stats:

Size” 60 x 60″ (unwashed)

Fabric top: Essex linen in Ivory, Kona cotton in Azure and melon.

Binding: Sketch in Aqua

Backing: Kona cotton Brown.

Linking up the Needle and Thread Thursday, TGIF and Finish it up Fridays.

Doggy Daze

At the beginning of the year I decided to participate in Craft it Forward through facebook.  Earlier this year I sent off a quilt to one friend and have finished off a second project.  This is actually for my friend’s dog Coco.  She had mentioned a couple of times that she was thinking she wanted a quilt for her dog’s spot on the couch.  I did tell her I would make that for her so she could give me the measurements on how big she needed it and let her pick out the fabric she liked.  She fell in love with Puppy Park from Riley Blake, which was perfect for this quilt and the decor in her living room. Then I kept the actual quilt design a secret.  I love how it turned out.

I used Julie Herman’s Hex n’ More ruler to cut out the half hexies and then sewed them together in a semi random pattern to fit the size of the quilt needed.

For the quilting I decided to put puppy paw prints running across the quilt and then fill in with stippling.  I love the way it turned out.

She knew that she was getting the quilt, but I had some fabric leftover she I decided to make a couple extras.  First I used the extra half hexies that I had cut out to make a little pillow.

Then I had some squares left over so I made a very small bag using the tutorial for a lined drawstring bag from In Color Order.  I filled the bag with homemade pumpkin dog treats.

Quilt Stats:

Fabric: Puppy Park by Riley Blake

Backing: Pet Park Paw Prints in Brown by Kaufman

Size: 26″ x 48″ (just perfect for a couch)

Pattern: No pattern, just cut out half hexies with the Hex n’ More ruler.

Linking up to Needle and Thread Thursdays ( If you haven’t checked it out you should, my Simply HST quilt from last week is being featured this week along with some other fantastic projects, yay!). and Finish it up Friday on Crazy Mom Quilts.