Gemmed – a baby girl quilt

After facing the epic fail of the bearding quilt. I quickly decided that I needed to make a second, a better quilt for my new (and first) niece.

My sister did NOT want all those pink and rosy colours so I opted for low volume fabrics with some colour mixed in.

Trimming blocks in girl-ish fabrics – that does not happen often over here… I might even have enjoyed the tedious work. A bit.

I let the blocks form little wonky multicolour gems. With just a bit of pink or violet or rose. Then I backed it with a multicolour dotted flannel, chose a variegating Aurifil thread, grading from blue over pink into white, and free motion quilted it with “organic” straight lines…

… and little petals within the gems.

It makes a lovely design on the back of the quilt (if I dare say so myself):

This time I added the lettering after I finished the quilting. First and last time. Period.

Do I need to mention that I bound it with a triple-zig-zag-stitch?
No. I always do and always will.

BUT I will mention how much I looooooove the binding I chose (shameless self-praise). Following the low volume theme, I chose a fabric stating “security is a thumb and a blanket” (must be the Peanuts / Charlie Brown?!). I really love the effect it has on the quilt and how it matches a baby quilt in particular.

Here’s another shot:

Well, here it is, the “remedy” for the bearding quilt:

Well, this was a lot of recap in a short time.
Now I desparately need to sew - otherwise I won’t have anything new to show you!

Happy quilting!
Christine

A Baby Boy Patchwork Quilt

My youngest sister had her first baby in February. A sweet little boy. They named him Oskar and you’ll never guess what I made for him…

Ta da…

A rather soft-toned little patchwork quilt with his appliqued name. (Well, how DID you know it was a quilt?!)

I chose the striped background to make it look like the name was written on lined paper. I raw edge appliqued the letters and outlined them with black Aurifil in a rather careless, wonky way. I like the effect so much that I will surely come back to this method often.

I free-motion quilted the patchwork part with dogwood quilting, one of my favourite quilting designs ever. As there are much more light fabrics, I used a white 50 wt. Aurifil so the thread blends well with most fabrics and just adds texture. The striped part was fmq using straight lines within the white stripes (see photo above).

And the same light striped fabric was used for the binding. If I knew where I bought it or what it name was I’d buy some more, I really grew fond of this versatile fabric! For the backing I used a dark grey fabric with white and green butterflies that I’ve had in my stash for ages.

And then I tried something new. When my husband gave me this sewing machine for christmas 2012, it came with an automatic embroidery module. I never tried it because I never wanted to sacrifice the little spare time I have for reading the manual.

Then I decided that Oskar’s Quilt needed a proper label and eventually I read the manual and installed the hoop. I could not make it work. I read the manual multiple times but the hoop did not move. After spending two hours muttering and swearing I called the Pfaff Dealer in complete desperation.

It turned out that I only forgot to remove a little transport securing plastic device. Stupid me. After 2,5 hours I made it work:

In the end I was so happy with this little label that I am sure I will make many more (Now that the darn plasting thingy is gone…)

Now guess what happend?! Little Oskar likes his quilt! See??

Isn’t he cute as pie? And he is sooooo “well behaved”! He sleeps well, he eats (or rather drinks) well, he seldom cries (and only with a low voice). He is such a handsome litte baby boy!

Thank you, dear brother-in-law for that lovely photo! And thanks for your permission to use it on my wee little blog (o:

Happy Quilting!
Christine

P.S. As you can see from the label, I made this quilt in january. The baby was born at the beginning of february. It “only” took me 2,5 months to write a blogpost. Guess how much sewing has been done during the last 4 months? Nearly nothing. My daytime job is so exhausting at the moment.

I so long for more time (and energy!) to sew. Even on the occasional afternoons off (when the boys are visiting friends or grandma), I can’t gather enough energy to sew. I am tired all the time. I can’t count the evenings when I headed downstairs for my sewing room, turned on the lights, looked at my WIPs and turned the lights off again.

Does this happen to you sometimes? How do you get over it? Is there a tried and proven method?