Sunday, December 19, 2010

a baby quilt finished -- before the baby!

My first effort at making a baby quilt stalled badly while I was sewing on the binding. I somehow got the binding a little too short when I sewed in on the front by machine; at first I thought it would be fine and plowed on with the hand stitching. Then I just completely lost all motivation. The quilt went into time-out. I realized just wasn't happy with the too-short binding, which led to an icky puckered section:So I ripped a bunch of stitches, realized the binding had been almost an inch too short,

and proceeded to fix it. Because the baby is due soonish, I decided to finish the binding by machine. I think it looks fine.
So I got it packaged up for its new little recipient-to-be:
And shortly afterward, got this picture of the quilt on the crib!
Now all it needs is a baby.
~Phosphorelated

P.S. I'm immensely proud that my first baby quilt is done before the baby arrived. I'm terrible with deadlines! Doesn't it feel great to get something right for once? Happiness all 'round.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

some Friday play

Yesterday a good friend of the lab came by and brought us holiday cheer. We'd all been a bit down, with the snow, and trying to finish a manuscript I was hoping would be done this summer, and one thing and another. But our friend cheered us up so much I finally came home and played with this:

Connecting Threads had a black Friday sale selling strip sets for half price, so I bought a couple in bright solids. It was such a great deal that I've been hoarding them ever since, and today I finally busted them out and started to play.
I cut 14" strips and started to piece them together.
I made blocks in warm and cool colors

and played with how those might fit into a woven stripe effect I was thinking about a while back.
I've also been wanting to try making a version of "Sonja's Windows" (a pattern in a quilting magazine somewhere, I don't know which one) ever since I saw some here.

I squared my blocks up to 13.5", and, right sides together, pinned a cool block with the stripes going vertically to a warm block with stripes going horizontally.
Sew around all four edges:
Cut apart on both diagonals:
and the result is four stripey half square triangle blocks!
I'm not really sure yet if this is what I want to do with these strips, and whether I'd put sashing between the blocks or not, but it surely is fun to just sew some happy colors together and see what happens!
I had a great Friday night. How about you?
~Phosphorelated

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

a new project






I've been inspired to try making a spiderweb quilt. I've been saving these fabrics for a while, as I have an idea who this quilt might go to, but for a long time couldn't decide on a pattern. I'm liking the white stars.
~Phosphorelated