Baby quilts

I've just quilted to two of my own baby quilts lately- the first one is a fun zig-zag quilt, pieced without triangles using this technique:

http://beesquarefabrics.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-make-zig-zag-quilt-without.html

I quilted this with a new ice-cream cone pattern that I designed. After I finished the quilt, I re-designed the ice cream cone to look a little more realistic & curvy.

The backing has a fun strip of leftover pieces from the front. I think it adds a little interest to the back.

And this boy quilt is my own design, using up scraps from other projects. It's fun to look over the quilt & remember other quilts that I've worked on. I suppose it can be a sort of I-spy quilt, there are things like frogs, fish, and cars to find in the scrappy areas. I quilted this freehand, using the Circuit Path pattern.

baby quilt

Here's the latest baby quilt for a baby shower at church. It has some fun girly fabric- they're talking on the phone & having pillow fights. It's really cute fabric.
The color in these pictures is a little off- it's a bright lime green, and a bright purple in real life.

I made up the pattern as I went- on had a little bit of the white fabric (it has teeny-tiny pink polka dots on it), so those strips ended up really skinny- only 1/2 inch wide finished. In the end I liked the effect.

Log Cabin baby quilt

Here's the latest baby quilt that I just finished... it's a log cabin with fabrics that I pulled out of my stash. Some of my favorites. It's quilted with a simple free-hand loopy pattern.

This quilt is a good example of what the Intelliquilter can do. The "here kitty" border was a purchased pattern- I had this quilt in mind when I found the pattern. I separated out the kitty, and repeated that in the border corners.

This is a baby quilt I made lately- found this fun car fabric at The Crafty Corner in Worthington. Thought it would be great for a boy's quilt. I used the square spiral quilting pattern on it.

Those corner blocks ended up too small, so I had to improvise & add the tiny white border to make everything work out. A nice happy accident- I like how the second white border looks.

What I've been up to....

Yesterday was the classic blizzard snowed-in day, so I decided to give soap-making a try... here's a picture of the bars just cut up...

I have been wanting to try this for a while & yesterday was the perfect day for it. I was a little leary of the whole lye- thing, but it went fine & was pretty much uneventful.

This batch is vanilla scented. The bars have to cure for 3 weeks before using.

The weekend before, I started on this baby quilt- it's all frayed-edge applique, if you can even call it that. The squares are just laid down & I quilted 1/4" from all the edges to hold them down. I'm going to wash it to fray the edges & hopefully it will be a nice snuggly quilt.

And lastly, here's the picture from our front window, after the raging winds have died down today. I have a feeling C will stay busy with the snow blower this winter. Do you see the snowman little C & I made a week ago? It looks like it's got it's arms up calling for help! "I'm drowning!"

New baby quilt top

Yesterday I put this together... I was feeling like I needed to accomplish something other than washing dishes & making meals. And there are quite a few baby showers coming up... it's nice to have some quilts ready to go when I need them.

I found the cutest cat fabric at Jo-Anns fabric when we were in Des Moines in October for the AQS quilt show there. I used a free pattern that I had gotten, called Speedy Baby 2. It went together in under 2 hours. I did veer from the pattern a bit, I changed that last border into 2 borders, because I wanted to repeat the cat fabric from the middle section.

The cat fabric makes me smile. :-)

Fabric Gift Basket

Another fabric basket. This one will be a baby shower gift, filled with little things- not sure what, yet. Maybe some baby shampoo & little toys. Watch out, these baskets are addictive.

Recycled Denim Bib

I have been looking for ideas for baby gifts. I often give a quilt, but want to have some other things on hand for when I can't (read: not enough time) make a quilt to give.

Here are a couple of recycled blue-jean bibs. I was tickled with the finished product. What's more American than Levi's?? (Well, apple pie, maybe, but that wouldn't make a very good baby shower gift, would it?) I thought these would be fun for a baby boy. The denim is nice & heavy to protect against those big spills.

A bib I had on hand became the template. I just cut out the pocket part & crazy-pieced the rest using a zig-zag stitch, with the pieces butted up together. I made a very skinny single-fold bias binding from some red fabric & bound the edges with that, applying with a very small zig-zag stitch. A little velcro sewn on for the closure, and ta-da! you're done. And $0 spent. My favorite part.