Evolution (3)

I haven't posted in a long time, but I have been sewing. Well, lately I have been. I took the summer off - since my sewing space is in our loft, which averaged about 100 degrees this summer. But once it cooled off and after we had some guests staying up there, I got started again. Of course, most of the time I don't have a lot of time for sewing, but I try to get an hour here and there. Caleb's quilt is coming along - the body is quilted and I am working on the borders. I was hoping to have it done this week, but some other things came along and it's not going to happen. But I'm sure it will be finished soon! I'll post some pictures as I do the final steps.

Snuggling

Here is another picture from our trip to PA: Lorrie, Zoie, Barb (Bobbi) and Maiah snuggling on the couch with Zoie's quilt and Evan's quilt. I'm so glad that the kids are enjoying their quilts!

Zoie's Quilt

When we were visiting Patrick's family last week, we took some pictures of Zoie's quilt. I made this quilt for my niece Zoie, based on colors in her nursery and a ladybug theme. It was finished in 2004.

Zoie's quilt is a patchwork of various-sized blocks in lavender, green and yellow with ladybugs and butterflies and an eyelet ruffle edge. I tied this quilt since the bugs would have interrupted the quilting too much.

Zoie and I with her quilt.

Evolution (2)

After three weeks of working on Caleb's quilt, the patchwork top is in two large peices, and I am ready to start assembling and quilting.
I spray-baste each top piece to the batting and backing fabric. (I love the spray stuff! I've never felt good about doing all the work of sewing it once just so you can sew it again and rip all the first stuff out. Yuk!)
Now that I have all three pieces of the quilt sandwich together, I can start quilting.

Evolution of a quilt ...

As I start a new quilt (for my Erin's newborn son, Caleb), I'm attempting to document the story of how that quilt was created. I started thinking about this quilt in October when we found out that Erin was having a boy (scrap the purple quilt I was thinking about and start over!). Erin picked out a theme for Caleb's room, and I started looking for fabric and thinking about a design. (This part took a while because I was also working on Evan's and Piper's quilts.)

After the thinking, and the fabric shopping (which really can go on forever, even if I'm not in the middle of three other things ...) and washing all the fabric, I decide on a pattern and do the math to figure the number and size of the blocks. In this case, I decided to do a patchwork of 2 1/2" squares, with a single, wide border. (For a crib-size quilt, that's 300+ squares.)

After checking the math, I start measuring and cutting.

Then I lay it all out and rearrange until I'm happy enough ...
and then the sewing starts. All these steps in reality are mixed up - going back and forth as necessary. Sewing is actually a process of pinning, sewing, ironing and then doing it all again. My iron is downstairs and my sewing machine is upstairs, so it's a good workout! There is a lot of sewing - smaller seams to start, and then longer seams as the block groups get bigger.

Evan's Quilt

Evan's quilt is all done and off in the mail! I made this quilt for my nephew Evan. It is a crib-sized patchwork of 3" blocks in green, yellow and blue. I mixed ginghams, plaids and stripes with a star print and solid white. The quilting is a diamond design in the center and rows of diamonds around the borders. The back is the blue star print. This quilt did not have a specific theme - just fun for a special little boy.

Finishing

Finally! I'm adding the binding to Evan's quilt - the last step, and then I'll be done. I'm so excited to be finished, and to give baby Evan his quilt (while he's still a baby). This project has been a really interesting learning experience because I learned a new way to assemble the quilt. Since it was a new thing, and since the guidelines I followed were designed for larger quilts, it took a little longer to put this quilt together. I was hoping it was going to make it faster! But I'm glad that I did it - in the future I'll just have to modify the technique a little to better fit my quilts. Hooray for finishing!