Stockings!

We are getting close to Christmas so this is finish is none to soon!  With the arrival of our daughter this year we are finally staying home for Christmas, this means that we actually need stocking at our house this year!  I decided to make our stockings this year and had a jelly roll of Aspen frost by Basic Grey in the sewing room.

I used the template from Imagine Gnats and loosely used her tutorial, but used jelly roll strips instead.

They turned out great and I am excited to use them this year.  Now the hard part is deciding who gets each one!

Oh, and this another thing crossed off my Finish a long Q4 list (found here)!

Linking up to: Needle and Thread Thursday, Finish it up Friday

Jungle ABCs

A friend of mine asked recently if I could make a baby quilt for a friend of hers.  I love making baby quilts, so any excuse is welcome!  The fabric for kids is adorable and the quilts come together so much faster than the larger quilts. This particular quilt was going to be for a little boy and the nursery was being done in an woodland theme.  After a little looking around I found the Life in the Jungle fabric by Doohikey Designs for Riley Blake.

 This great quilt on Etsy served as inspiration for design.It was adorable and my friend loved it.  It looked like it would be easy enough to make as I only had a week between arriving back in the country (I was leaving for vacation a couple days after she emailed me) and when the baby was due.  I picked up a fabric panel and a jelly roll and had them waiting for me when I got back.  Using the original quilt as inspiration I started cutting – the precut strips made putting this together a breeze.

I cut out squares from the panel and gave them each a border with a jelly roll strip.  I had to do a little measuring for the longer rectangle as it was a little skinnier than the other blocks from the panel.  I think it worked out okay with a border that is a little wider.

Along the bottom I raw edge appliqued the baby’s name and then quilted with a simple stipple.  The binding is a scrappy binding that I made with the leftover strips of the jelly roll that I had not used to border any of the panel blocks.  The backing is Roll Call in green fabric from the Life in the Jungle collection.

It is going to its new home this week!  It feels good to finally complete a quilt this year!

Race in the Woods

When I signed up for the long arm quilting class, I was told I would need a quilt to practice on – something that I wouldn’t be upset about if the quilting didn’t turn out great.  There weren’t any tops like that around the house – most that I was working on were presents for someone or had taken me quite a while to finish (for various reasons).  I had been wanting to play with some Walk in the Woods fabric and I had also been interested in trying a jelly roll race quilt after seeing so many at a local craft show a couple of months ago.  This seemed like a good project for the practice quilt – as I didn’t have any other reason to make it other than to practice quilting and it would be quick to put together.

I watched the video from the Missouri Quilt Co. on the jelly roll race quilt and got to work with my jelly roll.  I tried to mix up the colours as I was putting it together, but ended up with a lot of them matching up into “clumps” anyways.  I still like the final quilt, I just wish the reds were a little more spaced out.

The quilting was a pantograph, and it was really easy to follow once I got used to moving the machine around.  I like how the curves go well with the bows in the fabric (also used as the backing).

I used the blue and white stripes for the binding, which I love.  I decided to not do a machine binding this time (I love the machine binding usually), so it took a couple of days to get it all sewn down, but it goes well and doesn’t take away from the quilting.I am happy this went well and I enjoyed quilting it on the long arm.  You can hardly tel which was my first pass across the quilt unless you look really close at it (and most people won’t!).  Thanks to Sparrow Studioz for all the help!