Hooray for Seuss

At long last I have finished the Dr. Seuss quilt and I LOVE it!  This fabric line is absolutely adorable!  I highly recommend it to anyone who loves Dr. Seuss or has a little one who loves Dr. Seuss!

I love the back!  I used the all over Cat in the Hat print to surround a print that displays characters from various books together.  So cute!

I did my usual squiggly lines for quilting.  I didn't take any close ups of the quilting because honestly, it's horrible!  I don't know what happened this go around, but machine quilting just wasn't working for me.  After several hours spent with the seam ripper I decided that good enough would just have to be good enough.

Besides, the most important thing is, I think he likes it!!

Ahhh, I am one happy and proud mama!

Dr. Seuss top finished

Borders were not hard to add at all.  I will admit though I wouldn't want to add them to any size larger than a baby quilt!  The rest of the week I will focus on piecing the back.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Happy New Year!

So far my new year has been fantastic!!  I rang in the new year doing my most favorite things: cuddling my boys and sewing!  I would love to be able to say that becoming a mommy made me so "boring", but I've never been much of a party girl.  I have always preferred staying home, safe and warm with my beloved to going out to a crowded bar or party.

Tomorrow is my husband's last day of vacation and everytime I think about I want to cry!  He has been home for two weeks and it has been wonderful!  We've spent so much time together as a family and just the two of us, I don't know how I'm going to handle going back to the routine:(  We've gone to the park everyday, visited with both sides of our family, and we even picked out and bought the crib for the new baby!

Speaking of the new baby, with an extra set of hands to help me with Hurst this past week, I have made good progress on the Dr. Seuss quilt.  I am in love!  I might have to buy more fabric to make an adult size for me!

I hoping to take advantage of my last day of "vacation" to add the borders.  I'm a little nervous because I've never made a border before, but I'm dying to cut into the fabric.  When it's this cute who could blame me?

Wish me luck!  I can't wait to see this top completed!!  I think it's my favorite yet.

I hope everyone had a happy and safe New Year!  I'm looking forward to what everyone will be up to this year and I'm hoping to spend more time updating my blog! 

W.I.P. Wednesday

I had a wonderful time with my family this Christmas, but I have to admit I'm happy to be moving on to the new year!  We have an exciting, yet busy year coming up and I'm ready to start it! 

I love the approach of the new year.  After the chaos that can be Christmas you have a week of calm to reflect on the past year and to look forward and make plans for the new one.  With that in mind I have decided to start 2011 off fresh as far as quilting projects go.  I have decided to not plan too far in advance and just work on the projects that I have and try to finish them before starting something new.  We'll see how long that lasts:)

While I am ready to leave the holidays behind me, I do have one lingering project I would like to finish this week so that I can say I made something for Christmas!  I started working on a small table runner based on the one I saw here earlier this month.  I am just using one charm pack of "12 Days of Christmas" by Kate Spain for the front and will use a print from the line for the back.  Mine won't be as big as the one Jennifer made, but I have a small dining room table, so it will be perfect for us! 

Here are a couple of the blocks in progress:

My most exciting work in progress:

I've started working on the Dr. Seuss quilt!  I love it!  I can't say enough good stuff about the Happy Hour pattern.  It has been so easy to put together!  The most time consuming part has been cutting out the blocks, but that could be because I am fussy cutting out the characters.  I can't wait to finish this one!

Here are a couple close ups of my favorite blocks:

 

I am going to take advantage of the rest of naptime to try to finish a few more blocks!  Hope everyone else had productive weeks!

WIP Wednesday (early) and a finish

I am a little early for the WIP Wednesday, but I thought I would take advantage of a quiet moment at the computer.  I don't have much to contribute this week because we have been so busy with all of our Christmas activities.  We've been so busy baking, visiting the National Christmas Tree,

and decorating our family tree

that sewing has taken a back seat.  It has been worth it though!  This is Hurst's second Christmas, but this year is much more fun than last year!  He is able to participate a little bit, and last year he was too little to do anything really, but nap.  This weekend we are taking him to see Santa and we are hoping he won't cry.  I have taken him on a couple of "test runs" to the mall to let him see Santa before he sits on his lap.  I hope this does the trick!

I was able to finish the baseball quilt this week just in time for the December 15th deadline.  Oh well, it might be last minute, but it is on time!  I finished up the scrappy binding earlier this evening and now all I have to do is figure out how to get it to Kate to be sent with the rest of the Guild's contributions!

I hope a little boy in the area gets some comfort and warmth from this quilt.  This was such a nice project in which to participate.  I hope to be able to do more with the DC guild in the new year!

I have decided to not stress myself out about the two quilts I wanted to make as Christmas presents.  The people they are going to will love them just as much on their birthdays as they would have for Christmas.  I only have ten days left, so they probably wouldn't be finished anyway!  I am going to continue working on my tree skirt and hope it's completed by Christmas, and then I think I am going to take a little sewing break and spend time with my family.  I hope everyone had very productive weeks!

W.I.P. Wednesday

I have made really good progress this week.  I finally finished my Hushabye quilt and all three of us have enjoyed using it while sitting on our couch in our chilly basement.  I think next year I will have to make one that is a little more masculine for the boys!!  See this blog post for finished pics.

I am so close to finishing the baseball quilt and I am so proud of it!  I think I might be a new convert to FMQ, I love it!  It still isn't perfect, but it was much easier this time around and I finished quilting it in one nap time!  I think my next project I might try stippling and see how that goes, but this time around I played it safe and just did more of my wavy lines.  After Hurst goes to bed tonight I will finish the binding and I'm ready to move on to the next project.



I have decided to add a couple of new projects to the mix this week.  For years we have wrapped the trunk of our Christmas tree in a green blanket and I have decided this year that we need a tree skirt.  A quilted tree skirt of course!  I am planning on using this tutorial.  I feel in love with it last year as soon as I saw it, but with a newborn it just wasn't possible.  This year I'm going for it!  I am also thinking about making stockings for us too!  We will see how much I actually accomplish.  My major "W.I.Ps" for the rest of the week have to be laundry and housework, but this weekend I hope to spend a lot of time with my sewing machine.

Hope everyone else had productive weeks!

Hushabye is finished!

I am so happy to have finally finished this!  I am so proud of it, and I'm mostly thrilled because I get to keep it!

Here it is, made from almost 6 charm packs.  Simple, but pretty!

Please pardon my little helper!  He gets very excited when Mommy gets the camera out!

Here's the back, pieced together from the leftover charm squares and white tone-on-tone fabric I have had in my stash for years!  It feels so good to use that up!

I wanted to do something a little different for the back, so pieced the strip a little off-center and I'm glad I did.  I think it gives the quilt a little more character!

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend as much as I did!  Now back to the grind...

Ducky quilt for Hurst

I fell in love with Lizzie House's Red Letter Day fabric the second I saw it online and knew I had to have it for a baby quilt.  I thought I would make one for a baby shower gift, but my son had other plans.  As soon as I brought the fabric home from my favorite store Hurst started rolling around on it and giggling.  I knew then, even though his nursery is decorated in airplanes, that the Red Letter Day quilt would be his.  My husband was nice enough to entertain Hurst Sunday afternoon so I could sew on the binding.  I just absolutely love it!  I saw the quilt Faith of Fresh Lemons made for her son and thought it was the perfect design to showcase the fabric!  Hope she thinks imitation is the highest form of flattery!!

It was the perfect design for someone like me who is still learning to piece and quilt by machine.  I cut stips from each of the fabrics in various widths and then pieced them together.  It is quilted in lines that go straight across the quilt in various widths which is very flattering to the design.

I pieced the back together with leftovers from the front.  I just love the green and blue duck fabric!!  It is my favorite!

I love that I am finally finishing projects that have been waiting for a few months!  It feels so good to check this off my list, not to mention I think he really likes it!