Faux Baby Cherries: A Finish!

Hello Beautiful!

Howdy y'all! I'm so very excited to share a finished quilt with you today! Thanks to a quilting angel, I was able to get some backing material to start finishing up the tops that I've made. It's amazing what a shopping trip for fabric can do for your quilting motivation! I came home ready to sew all the things! I scored a lovely gray on gray 108-inch wide print - thanks to coupons, I paid around $22 for 3 yards of it! I couldn't pass that up! Now I've got backings to hold me over for a while! :)

The sun dipped behind the trees just as I headed outside and led to the BEST light ever!

Anyway, back to the quilt! As I mentioned in a previous post, this was made from a charm pack (Marmalade by Bonnie and Camille) sent to me by a quilty friend and some leftovers from another quilt. I used the Charm Pack Cherry pattern from the Fat Quarter Shop, but I only had 1 charm pack instead of 2. These aren't normally my go-to kind of fabrics, but I absolutely loved how it turned out! :)

First time stippling = SUCCESS! :)

I ended up stippling it on the First Born since I hadn't quilted anything in ages. Also, it may be weird, but I had NEVER stippled anything before this quilt! I tried once when I first started out and it was just bad bad bad. But it seems all my doodling paid off because it was a breeze and I absolutely loved it!

Happy quilt roll!

I tracked down all the aqua bits of fabric leftover from my Miss Kate quilt and put together a scrumptious little scrappy binding. I was a bit uncertain at first about such a bright binding, but it's one of my favorite parts of the quilt!

Love that scallop fabric, but wish I had the brains to cut it the other direction! Grrr!

And of course a little label! I'm proud that (almost) everything I've made this year has had a label on it.

Hanging out on the fence, a signature quilt pose at this apartment. :)

You may think that something is different about my pictures today - and you would be right! My in-law's gave me their old camera, an upgrade from my old camera that broke and a definite upgrade from my phone! I'm hoping to improve my photography skills now that I have a dependable camera, as well as improve my editing skills. I even remembered to put a watermark thingy in the corner for once! Go me!!

Thanks for stopping by and reading! Hope y'all have a good weekend, happy sewing! :)

Look who greeted me at the door! No editing necessary on this handsome hound! :)

A Little Finish: A Charity Baby Quilt

Howdy y'all! I've got a finish to share this week! The Charity Quilt that you've seen bits and pieces of over the last month is finally finished! I had hoped to get some better pictures of it, but it has rained almost all week here so indoor pictures will have to do. :(

Fabric courtesy of Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation (I linked to her blog at the end of this post!)

This baby quilt started as a bundle of fabric I won in a giveaway. I love the cute little prints, but I never knew what to do with it. After hanging onto it for nearly a year, it finally hit me: a baby quilt! But for who?...To give away, of course!

Yes, I did do a quilt photo shoot on top of a dog kennel...it's been a long week!

This was just the mindless sewing I needed! Easy half square triangles, an easy layout, and easy quilting made for an all around soothing experience.

The backing is just the bigger cuts of leftover fabric, along with some smaller squares to make it a bit taller. It sort of makes it a reversible quilt!

The quilting is...I'm not entirely sure. It was inspired by some quilting I saw by Anja over at Anja Quilts. She says she hates actually quilting her quilts, but she's pretty darn good at it! This was a pretty quick and easy design, but I'm still not 100% sold on it. 

Even the binding was easy, which is insane for me! Lol. I love how scrappy the binding is! I almost used all of my scraps from these fabrics to make the binding, I'm so happy about that!
Now I just have to contact the local hospitals and see if any of them will take this quilt, along with some other things I've made! Have a happy Friday y'all!

My quilting helper *had* to do some quality control before this one gets lint rolled and ready for delivery! :)

Linking up with Finish it Up Friday and Needle and Thread Thursday!

This finish is my goal for OMG April, I'm linking up just under the wire with this one! :)

Also, this is another finish for the Quarter 2 Finish-A-Long list, which you can see here!

Finish-A-Long: Quarter 2 Goals!

Shew, the second quarter of the year has begun! Which means it is time to start brainstorming and goal setting for the next 3 months! My fabric buying skidded to an impromptu stop earlier last quarter, but I still have fabric from my stash to work with so I'm going to keep sewing as much as the stash will let me! :) So here's my list, y'all. I'm placing my 'have to finish this quarter' goals first and the further down the list a goal is, the less pressing it is for it to be completed.

1.) Commission Baby Quilt

(Sorry, no picture yet!)

After finishing the Isabella Quilt, my Mom either took a picture or took the actual quilt to work and showed it off to her friends before popping it in the mail. Suddenly, everybody wants LBCQ to make them something! This order is for a quilt like the Isabella quilt with a different color palette. My client picked out the fabrics and after cutting them and laying them out, I didn't have a good feeling about it. My Mom came over and looked and agreed: it just wasn't working. So the fabric was sent back to my client to let her see and have the final say. If she likes it, I'll press forward. If not, some things will be swapped out before progress is made.

2.) Baby Tag Toy

So soft and fuzzy!

This is actually for the same person that wants the quilt I believe. They saw a cute little tag toy on Etsy and asked if I could make something similar. "Sure" was barely out of my mouth before most of the supplies showed up at my doorstep. I'm actually really looking forward to making this one, I think drafting a little pattern and trying something new will be fun!

3.) Charity Baby Quilt

You've seen a few peeks of this one lately. The top is all done and I'm hoping to possibly get started on piecing the backing today!

4.) Scrap Vortex Quilt

These blocks just keep coming back all the time, time to get them finished up!

I started these scrap vortex blocks a while back, back when Crazy Mom Quilts did a Quilt Along last year! I knew I wasn't going to make a whole quilt of these blocks, but I have a plan for how I want to do these. I think the Kona Coal is really going to make those scrappy blocks pop!

5.) Hexie Quilt

It's hard to tell that this fabric is white on white, but I think those hexies will look great against it. :)

These hexies are the product of a hurt back in February. I may have to make quite a few more before I can fiddle with the design in my head, but I have all the supplies (background and plenty of scraps for hexies!) to make this top come into existence. :)


6.) Alison Glass

I just want to hug this fabric all the time. The rainbow goodness is just fantastic!

You may remember that I got a fat quarter bundle of Alison Glass fabric for Christmas from my parents and I was absolutely over the moon about it! It sits proudly on my fabric shelf just waiting to be turned into a beauty. I actually have two pattern ideas in mind (and may be able to squeeze both of them out of this bundle!) but I haven't been able to get the Essex Linen I want for the first pattern. I'm still deciding on a background fabric for the second pattern, but until those fabrics magically find their way to my sewing room, this goal is a long loooooong shot. 

7.) Notched Baby Quilt

Seriously, check out that Notched tutoiral, the block is awesome!

I was a lucky blogger last year. I think I won 3 or 4 giveaways in all! One win was this bundle of solids that you may remember from a huge free block blog hop last summer. I have planned to make Yvonne of Quilting Jetgirl's Notched Block using her free tutorial. I'm thinking I'll need more white fabric, but again, unless the fabric fairy pays me a visit, I may just get this one partially started.

Man, that seems like an overwhelming amount of goals, but I love having a game plan in place. And since there's no penalty for not meeting all the goals I set by the end of the quarter, there's no reason I can't shoot for the stars! :) I'm linking up with SloStudio for this quarter. Head on over and join the goal setting fun, there's plenty of chances to win some cool prizes and see some awesome projects! 

OMG April: Charity Quilt

Howdy y'all! I can't believe we are already in April! As fast as time is flying by, that means another goal setting party over at Red Letter Quilts for One Monthly Goal. Honestly, I wasn't really sure what to pick this month. Most of my time lately has been dominated by quilt commissions, leaving less time for my typical sewing. And when I do have time for me-sewing, I'm usually scratching away in my little design notebook dreaming up projects that I don't have the supplies for. I can't decide if that's a good problem or not!

After a little brain storming, I think I found something that I have all the supplies for and I'm excited to get it finished this month! I started this charity quilt last month when I needed a breather and some mindless sewing. I've got part of the top pieced, so this month I want to finish piecing the top, get it quilted up and bound. Then the journey of finding it a home!

Happy stitching!

WIP Wednesday: Back to the Basics

Happy Hump Day, y'all! Thank you so much for the well wishes, it really brightened my day to know I've got good vibes coming from my quilty friends. :) After the sewing fiasco that was last week (it involved 3 broken needles, more breaking thread, and a crying temper tantrum on my part), it suddenly hit me: I was not having fun. I was downright miserable, which has never happened while sewing. I sewed the last line of quilting, folded up the WIP, and turned my machine off. And even though there was plenty of time left in the day, I didn't even look at my machine! I took a day off and thankfully came to my senses! So much has been going on lately that I was viewing something I love as a job, which sucked the joy out of it. Rather than being fun, I was more focused on all the nagging things in my brain rather than the project in front of me. So I took a deep breath and decided I needed some simple sewing to bring my heart some joy.

I won this bundle from Kelly @ My Quilt Infatuation!

I won this fabric last year and although it's darling, I didn't see me using it to make a quilt for myself. I decided it was time to make my first charity quilt! So I looked at my quilty bucket/to-do list for ideas and decided it was time to tackle HST's (half square triangles). I used a popular method to make two at a time (there are actually quite a few ways to make them!) and just cut my squares to fit my fabric and minimize waste. I chain pieced to my heart's content and, ya'll, it. was. Fabulous! As crazy as it sounds, I even enjoyed sitting down and trimming all those little wings off the corners of the triangles. :)

I threw them up on my design wall and played with them a little bit before settling on this layout. It's just enough chaos with a tad bit of order. I couldn't help but smile as I organized them; there's just something so soothing about playing with fabric.

Somebody is keeping this WIP warm! Lol.

Something as simple as this lifted my spirits and I'm ready to tackle the binding of the commission quilt I was working on! So close to the finish! :)