Sidetracked

I didn’t mean to start up posting to my blog again and then leave it sitting idle but I got waylaid by a good friend. 


I used to make baby quilts for all of my coworkers for quite a long time.  And, of course, I made baby quilts for members of my own family and a few close friends for their children or grandchildren.  I don’t make quilts for customers and now I don’t make quilts on request.  I much prefer to make charity quilts for children in need.


I was in a brain fog over the holidays and instead of saying no when asked to make a baby quilt, I found myself saying “primary colors or pastels”?  Big mistake.  At least I got to choose the fabric I wanted to work with.    So, this is what I rushed to get done so I could go back to what I had planned on doing this month:

Dr Seuss fabrics are always fun for babies and toddlers.  As is often the case with panels, the fabric tends to be askew and I had to finagle the block size to accommodate and correct the unevenness.  But, all-in-all, I think it turned out to be cute.


Then I got back on my schedule and will probably be able to finish my project for One Monthly Goal.  Will try to post tomorrow!!

A Lovely Package

Packages are fairly rare around here.  We are not big internet shoppers - although a few fabric sales have caught my eye in the past and my husband is getting entirely too savvy on Golfsmith and LostGolfBalls dot com sites - lol!

But I did receive this wonderful package today from a fellow Sunshine On-Line Quilt Guild member in New Jersey:

It was chock full of goodies:

my watch bear was enthusiastic!

Lots of extra fabric (think Backings) and fresh longarm needles and even a little extra surprise.  And lots of quilt tops that are now patiently waiting in line for that pesky longarmer to get on the stick!

I still have the below from my friends' retreat to quilt, so the above will have to wait a short while.

quilts at top of photo - backing at the bottom

And I was surprised this morning to see the robins stop by on their way South.  Some years we see them and some we don't.  They were very skittish so I didn't get good pictures, but I had to document their arrival (and departure soon thereafter):

My beloved dog is really not allowed in my sewing room on the second floor.  I have a baby gate in the stairwell to assure she stays out and doesn't get stuck with pins dropped onto my Berber carpet up there.  She has been scanned, pawed over and poked so much recently as they test for reasons why her liver enzymes are elevated, that I relented and let her up with me recently: She was fascinated by the view from the second story!  Too funny:

She had an all-day vet visit today to have a blood test every four hours - testing for Cushing's disease, an adrenol gland disorder that allows too much cortisol in her system.  We'll know the results next week.  Meanwhile, I'll sew and wait ...

Grandparent’s Day

Last Sunday was Grandparent’s Day – one of those Hallmark holidays.  So my brother and SIL and their family came down to visit my mother, 86, who is in poor health.  My brother has three boys and two have wives and one has a 2-yr old baby girl (my mother’s first great-grandchild).  There was a real crowd and it made my mother very happy to see everyone.  They came to FL from Colorado, Illinois and Indiana.

 We ate at John’s Pass Village, close to where they were all staying near my mother at the beach.  They all got to see the dolphins swimming in the intercoastal waterway.

View from their condo

They have a boardwalk of shops there right on the water and the baby discovered the stuffed dog in front of the pet store – it’s hard to capture a picture of her since she’s a little perpetual motion machine!

Now You See Her

Now You Don't !!

 Of course, I couldn’t forget about quilting and when I saw the tile in the bath at their condo, I had to take a photo – LOL!

 But I did finish up a top this weekend from a great book called “Take 5” by Kathy Brown – I got this book for my birthday and will be making more from it soon, since it’s so good:

 You use just 5 different fabrics and can work up some great looking tops really fast with her excellent directions.  The stripes in this one don’t photograph well, but the colors are bright and vibrant and the print has little raccoons and mushrooms - perfect for a child's quilt:

And lastly, I noticed this little beastie sticking his head up from the grass in our yard:

He’s a snapping turtle that I guess wanted a little relief from all of the standing water back in our conservation area.  Even when they’re small like this guy, they can bite your fingers off, so I gave him a wide berth!

I've Been Distracted

I haven't posted because I've been distracted - and I have nothing to show for it.  But I did finally hurry up and finish this little baby quilt since the baby is now over a week old.  I do like to finish these baby quilts before the child is in kindergarten (LOL!).  This was from Eleanor Burns' Quick Trip Around the World and I only managed to mess up two strips (operator error - she warns you not to do what I did ...).  At least they were fixable (and she tells you how to fix it, too).  And then I put the last two borders on backwards - the last border was supposed to be light colored to hide the binding stitching, but oh, well.  It happens.  This is the quilt and I like how it turned out:

This is the pretty *mommy* side...

And this is the *baby* side!

No, I Didn't Finish My UFO

I had posted on March 28^th that I might just get one of my more time-consuming UFOs quilted and done to meet the Patchwork Times’ 2011 UFO Challenge.  Well, it turns out that I didn’t get that done … I started working instead on a baby quilt for my neighbor.  Sometimes I don’t plan ahead too well!  I’m working this one up using Eleanor Burn’s design called Quick Trip Around the World and it really is pretty quick.  I need some border material and backing and I’ll get this over to the brand new baby boy then finish up that UFO in April.

The next number selected for the UFO Challenge is #4 and for me that will be finishing up some pink/green Antique Tile blocks.  Here’s a link to that block design by Marcia Hohn at Quilter’s Cache.  I should be able to accomplish that (best laid plans, huh?!).

Brown Bear and Bonus Flimsy

I finally polished off Brown Bear, Brown Bear today - it's finished and bound and ready to be delivered.  Speaking of delivery, the baby it is intended for is due on the 17th.  Not bad timing!  Here is the final with a detail of the cute backing with bear paws:

And I also finished putting on some borders to complete a flimsy that is intended to go to Wrap a Smile.  I put it together like this:

1. started with lots of my leftover binding pieces (all 2 1/2 inches wide),
2. just kept sewing them end to end,
3. then re-cut them into 6 inch pieces,
4. sewed three of the pieces together,
5. cut a single piece of *top* to fit across the pieces to make a *block*,
6. arranged the blocks to suit me,
7. sewed them together and added an inner border,
8. used the leftover smaller pieces to make squares and added the final border.

These were some of the steps:

Leftover Binding Strip Ends

Binding Strips Sewn End-to-End Randomly

Long Strips Sub-Cut Then *Tops* Added to Make Blocks

Finished Flimsy with Borders

Easy-Peasy and used lots of scraps to make a colorful top.

Brown Bear Ready for Quilting

I finished up the Brown Bear, Brown Bear top and now it's ready for quilting.  Do you ever wonder why they design these cute tops so that the width of the top just exceeds the width of the fabric by 1-4 inches?  Of course, you don't wonder - you know it's so you'll have to buy twice the yardage of fabric to get the backing to fit.  Don't these companies know that we can be ingenious about how to piece a back to avoid buying more fabric?  The prices now are outrageous (as are the prices in the economy as a whole), so we have to do just as our fore-mothers did - we make do!

Pause for a Baby Quilt

I was on a good roll with completing some UFOs for donating to my favorite children's charities, but today I had to pause.  I just received short notice of a baby shower for a friend's great-grandchild (all three generations were child brides apparently - my friend is only in her 60s!).  So today I'll show the first few blocks and some of the intended fabrics.  I hope to be done by Saturday ... maybe ....