1st B-day Quilt

We have 3 different 1st birthdays in a week! Jaxon, Christopher & Mason. Jaxon's Grandma makes him the most adorable quilts so I'll be getting him a book instead. But Christopher & Mason will each get a blanket from me. Because I missed Christopher's baby shower, I decided to make him a baby quilt out of flannel material. As for Mason, I bought this super cute panel for Maiyo and decided to make it into a blanket for Mason instead.

The quilt will be made out of these flannel prints:

Even though Christopher's already 1, I'm sure he'll be able to use this quilt as a play blanket. I'm following this Simply Charming Quilt pattern by Quilting in the Rain. As you can see in the pic above, I've cut 40 (5x5) blocks and 4 (5x36.5) rectangles. Then I sewed the blocks together in strips of 8 then sewed the strips and rectangles together.

I then sandwiched the quilt top with a natural cotton batting and a plain yellow flannel back fabric. Instead of binding the quilt, I used the quilt back (yellow fabric) to make a boarder. I pulled the fabric forward, pressed then refolded and pressed again. Here's a pic of the pinned quilt & boarder:

Next I stitched the Boarder by hand then tied off the quilt using purple embroidery floss. Here it is completed:

For Mason, here's a part of the panel I mentioned and the backing is an already quilted fabric that my friend Sheila Moon gave me from her clothing company leftovers!

With this blanket I just pinned the top panel to the quilted fabric and used the back fabric to make the boarder like the quilt above then sewed together.

Instead of quilting this blanket I also decided to tie it off with orange embroidery thread so that it would pop a little more. This blanket will be a great for many hours of play time. Hope he likes it!

Shouse Family Baby Quilt

Ana's cousin is expecting their first granddaughter and so of course I had to make a quilt. It's the same layout as Maiyo's, an Irish Chain Quilt and I got the pattern here.

Front/Back

 Back

 Front

I loved making this quilt. Again, it's made with flannel material, which I love for baby blankets, and I decided to tie this off which I didn't do with Maiyo's. I put in way more ties than were needed but that's because I like to tie in pattern and the blocks are only 6 in wide:-) The colors are very feminine so this will work out great for the baby girl, hope she likes it!

Major Nesting

So I officially got the nesting bug last week and it just keeps getting stronger.

It started with a quilt I was making for my friends son. I had tried making a blanket for him at his birth but I messed it up and put it away to take to a real sewer to help me with it...2 years later and I decided to scrap it and make a quilt instead.

Using the Irish Chain pattern I used for Baby Flores, I thought it'd be nice to make it bigger than toddler size so I used the size 12x12 blocks...well, a little miss calculation later and I end up making a Full size quilt!!!

Here's some photos of the progress & finished quilt:

1 Chain of 12x12 Blocks

 

Chains sewn together & Finished backside:

Finished Quilt!

In the middle of making this I had a break cuz I ran out of fabric so I started on another toddler quilt for another friend who is expecting their first in October:

And just to top things off, I have a 1 year old b-day party to go to this weekend so I thought I'd make another blanket as a gift: (not a quilt but did sew & tie off to give the allusion of one)

I also made a stacking toy (without a pattern), which didn't turn out as I hoped but I learned a lot so will try again soon. Here's a pic:

Because I can't sit at the sewing machine all day, so I also started making jams and canning. The process is really intense and takes roughly 3-4 hours! I've made Blackberry, Strawberry & Plum Jams as well as Lemon Curd. I canned 70 little jars as favors for the Baby Shower BBQ and several half pints that I plan to give for presents. We cracked open a strawberry this week and all I have to say is, there's nothing like homemade jam! Next up is Peach Jam & Peach Chutney!

Maiyo's Baby Quilt & My First One!

So a few weeks after we found out we were pregnant, our local fabric store (Hearts Fabric) was having their annual sale which is the only one they have each year! So I decided that I wanted to try and make a baby quilt!

No experience in quilting and no pattern to boot, I set off and went crazy. $150 later, I had all kinds of fabric swatches & yards of fun fabrics, and went straight home to hopefully find an easy quilt pattern online. I googled 'baby quilt patterns' and found this one: http://quilting.about.com/od/blockofthemonth/ss/irish_chain_3.htm

So I began work. First I thought I'd use several different fabric patterns for the blocks:

But then I decided to use just the one Owl & Monkey fabric pattern & then use the Hot Dog fabric for the start & finish of the quilt. Those two mixed with the brown as the main boarder and I was left with the ABC fabric pattern to use as the inner boarder and decided to have it as the back side of the quilt as well, instead of the plain brown.

I had a lot of fun with this quilt, though I did make one mistake, I sewed the backside upside down, but the thing is, all the fabrics, except the ABC one, can be viewed either way, so you can't really tell! It took me a total of 4 straight sewing days to make this. That's about 25 hours! (of course this was my first and I had a lot of trial, error, and what the %$&! going on:-)

Since I used all flannel fabric it came out really comfy and you can even catch me cozying up with it! Definitely need to make a full size one of these for me! (Lots of work though!!!)

And I even gave it my personal little touch. I just hope that the baby will enjoy this and keep it for many, many years:-)