Elmer baby boy quilt

Our friends had their first baby in November and when I asked her what kind of quilt she’d liked to have for the baby she said: “Elmer”.

Well. So much the better! I always wanted to make a solids-only version of Elmer! Et voilà:

He really looks like the original from the book:

Above you can see Elmer fused to the background and here he comes “unassembled”:

Then I had to wait for the baby to be born because I wanted to include the name. They named the little boy “Valentin” and this is me during one of our MQG sew-ins:

 

Can you beleive I acutally embroidered the name?! Me, who hates handstitching?! But as I told you, every name has a “hidden” font. Valentin called for handembroidery.

For the back I chose a simple patchwork of kona cotton solids from various charm packs.

The free motion quilting was once again done with Aurifil thread in light grey. Dogwood design almost all over, I only omitted the elephant.

Instead of using the striped multicolour binding I used in the original Elmer Quilt, I chose a rainbow of solids:

Once again finished with a triple zig zag stitch.

And here you can see him ready to be cuddled and loved:

I somehow feel that this is not the last Elmer Quilt I made… They are just too much fun to make!

Dare to be different!
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?

Baby Party Traditions

My entry for Blogger’s Quilt Festival Spring 2013 is this Paper Pieced Baby Quilt:

 

I made it for a friend who was expecting her second baby – another girl.

I used these orphan Paper Pieced Blocks (my first ever!) that I made at Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat in London last year…

… and turned them into a simple baby quilt top by sashing the blocks in white.

I basted the quilt sandwich and drew a 2” grid with a watersoluble pen.

Afterwards I used a free motion foot and some white thread to quilt dogwood petals all over the negative space.

In between and around the blocks I quilted some organic (aka: free motion) straight lines and bound it in matching stripes.

If it hadn’t been intended for my friend’s newborn girl, I would have kept if for myself. I love this little quilt best of all quilts that I made – even if it is not flawless.

The baby arrived around mid-April, I gave her the quilt two weeks ago and I am happy to report that she loves it. Why so late? you may ask, my anglophone friends. Well, in Germany we don’t celebrate a “Baby Shower”. Celebrating a Baby before its birth is superstitiously believed to bring bad luck.

Traditionally a german baby-birth-party (aka “Pinkelparty”) was thrown by the Baby’s father (while mother and baby are still at the hospital) for Dad’s (male) friends and (male) neighbours.

Nowadays, these parties are often attended by men and women alike and they are usually postponed until 10-20 days after baby’s birth so that the baby and its mother can attend, too. Nevertheless, these parties are still quite informal and casual. Beyond comparision to all those beautiful “baby showers” that pop up in blogland.

Is there a “baby-party-tradition” in your country/region/family? Please do share, it will be fun to compare superstitions and/or (silly) traditions!

Thank you very much for visiting and reading.
Have a nice festival week!
Christine

A Paper Pieced Baby Quilt

It all begann in June last year:

Above you can see Lynne’s Paper Piecing Class at Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat in London. I was terrified as I had never tried Paper Piecing before. But Lynne explained everything so thoroughly and perfectly that I left the class with 3 finished blocks.

They were meant to be made into a cussion but somehow that never appealed to me. So they sat in my U.F.O. pile for 9 months. One day I saw this quilt on pinterest and I knew what I wanted to make. A baby quilt.

And I wanted to try some new Free Motion Quilting. I had seen this tutorial and wanted to give it a try ever since. The design is called Dogwood. After basting the quilt sandwich I drew a grid on the quilt top and without any practise I started to quilt.

I will not conceal that there are some petals that are less than imperfect but (to my own surprise) I don’t care a bit.

In the photo above you can see the grid and how I quilted one flower per square. Around the paper pieced blocks I have sewn some free motion straight lines because the grid didn’t fit around the blocks.

And here’s a shot of the finished quilt after washing:

I had some Remix stripes in my stash that match the colours of the blocks very well and I even had a matchy-matchy-dotty-flannel for the backing:

I attached the binding with my sewing machine – this time using a simple straight stitch.

Now let’s face the two things that really annoy me.
First. Bleeding. There’s one green fabric that bleeded into the white fabric.
See below in the block at the right. Any suggestions how to fix that are welcome. That never happened before )o:

Second. Bearding. There are many many fibres that escaped through the top fabrics AND the backing. That never happened either.

What frustrates me most about this circumstance is that the piece of batting I used for this quilt was a leftover. And I’m not sure were it came from, what brand it is nor how I used the main piece of that batting. There’s another quilt top rolled in a piece of batting waiting to be finished – and I fear it might be the same sort of batting. Grrr.

All that being said, I still love that little quilt.

It was intended to be a gift for our friends who are expecting a second baby girl soon – do you think I can still give it away with this heavy bearding? I fear that the baby will constantly be eating cotton fibres. What do you think?!

Happy quilting!
Christine

Preparing for Dogwood

I’m preparing a Baby Quilt Top for Dogwood Quilting.
The top is made using my first ever Paper Pieced Blocks from FQSR London 2012.

Basting and marking is done.

Looking forward to give it a try tomorrow (o:

Happy Quilting
Christine