Baby Quilt Done!

 It can be so hard to make quilts for other people.  Trying to figure out what they will like always leaves me second guessing my choices.

Here is her nursery set though, so I think this will go nicely without being too matchy matchy.

I just finished the quilting and will get the binding sewn on this evening in time for slow stitching Sunday.  

Handwork Sunday

 I was on a roll with machine quilting and thought I would take on the Dear Jane that has been sitting in a cupboard for a while now waiting for hand quilting.  I got two rows done before deciding that it just didn't look good.  It looked like a child had drawn all over my quilt.  Instead I switched the machine to a long basting stitch and basted the rest for hand quilting.  I'll be out of town for training next week and this will make a nice take along project for the hotel room.  This really is a quilt that calls for hand work, and it isn't all that big with only 48 blocks. 

The rest of the day was busy with binding.  There are now 7 quilts in my stack waiting to have the binding hand sewn to the other side.  I guess I won't be bored during TV time for a while!  4 of these were quilted during my weekend marathon, the other three were already done and waiting for the binding to be made and sewn on.  Now I need to go reassemble the sewing room and get things put away so that I can pack and get ready for my training tomorrow.  Shifting gears is so hard to do.

Another

This little guy didn't take long to quilt up. I'll do the binding after dinner.  Not crazy about the multicolor thread or the swirls in the snowballs.  I'm moving on though, 'cause I'm still on a roll. 

And the Baby Quilt Makes Two

 As soon as a quilt gets loaded on the frame, the urge to start quilting becomes overwhelming.  Especially after I figured out that Zack's quilts need to get done.  Also, I picked up a spool of baby pink thread while I was out this morning.  And how long could this tiny little guy take anyway?  The borders got a little loop de loop with flowers while the center got got plain old loop de loops.  I kept them small to go with the scale of the blocks. 

It isn't a big quilt, and it doesn't have a home, but I'm sure someone will have a baby girl eventually.  Now the frame is empty again and I can get moving along with the monkey quilts.  Two quilts in one day, I'm doing a little happy dance right now. 

Baby Quilt Bonanza

I was up way too late last night finishing up the two baby quilts for the shower today. The first one is for a girl with a hunter green nursery with cherry furniture.
The next is for a surprise baby, so I went with brights and novelties. It was getting late by the time that the binding came up, so I did a cheater turnover binding on the first and sewed both sides on the machine for the second. I'm not thrilled with how that part turned out, but I was rushing a bit.
I would have come home and gone straight to bed this afternoon, but it was Girl Scouts tonight, so I had to do that first. It is 8:33 now though and I am calling it a night. Just two and half days until spring break, pushing jello up hill the whole time.

March Madness

It's been two weekends since my last post. (Sounds like the Catholic thing where they say it's been two weeks since my last confession) Last weekend was the big camporee for the Girl Scouts. That required quite a bit of planning and work on my part, and quilting took a back seat for a while. So did house and yard work, so that has taken of bit of catch up and recovery work. It was a nice weekend though, and I think the girls enjoyed themselves. This weekend was the camporee for the Boy Scouts, which was Kurt's job, leaving me home to work on the catching up. It was finally nice enough to venture out into the yard, and I spent 8 solid hours out there cutting out the dead foliage. This winter took a big toll on our landscaping, I can already see some of what is lost, but I think some of it will come back with a little patience. I'm exhausted now, with lots of sore muscles to remind me of my hard work.
Last week at school was our big accreditation visit, so there was a bit of effort needed there as well. That seems to have gone well, though it was a bit stressful for everyone to have lots of visitors traipsing about. There is only a week left until spring break, and that includes half a day on Friday as well as all of the 1oth graders gone on a college visit for one of the days. Not many teaching days amongst all of that, but I'll get as much in as I can.
There are two ladies at work getting ready to have babies any minute, so I decided to take some time this weekend to work on baby quilts. One is going to be girl, so I chose pink and green for that. I based it on a stripy quilt that I designed for the Girl Scout nursing home project a couple of years ago. I think it is soft and feminine, though Kurt thinks it looks like something for a little old lady. (Sometimes I wonder why I keep asking him what he thinks -- he can be brutal). The other is based on a pattern that I saw in Quiltmaker magazine and uses strip sets and four patches surrounding squares of novelty fabrics. I used 2 inch strips instead of the 2.5 inches in the pattern, and increased the size of the center squares as well. I think I changed the corners a bit too, though I don't have the pattern here to check. Looking at the photo, I'm thinking I could have made them a bit larger still to be equal in size to the total size of the 16 patches formed where all the corner squares meet. I've got the blocks put together now, though they aren't in the pictures. Now I've just got to find something for the back and get them all layered up. They aren't large, so it should take long to get them quilted and bound.