French Quilt: Finished

It took me a while to finish this one, but I am proud to say that this quilt was my first attempt at the pieced back. It turned out quite well if I may say so myself :) This quilt was a present for my mom for her 50th birthday. The pattern was from this book, but I made it smaller. I used 1 charm pack and 1 jelly roll of Pom Pom de Paris by French General for Moda Fabrics. So without further ado, here it is:

 

This is the front

This is the back

The backing was made by taking the leftover jelly roll pieces and sewing them all together, 6 strips at a time. I squared the resulting blocks to be about 12" in length and pieced them all together. I attached a bella white fabric (same as used on the front) to top and bottom. Then I attached the backing fabric on either side of my strip. It definitely took much longer to make, but I like the way it looks. One thing I learned though was to not quilt parallel to the white strips. It ended up looking a bit off because the backing strip was not perfectly aligned to the front.

 

The batting I used is woolen. I was nervous when we washed it for the first time, but it was ok, it shrunk just enough to give the quilt the desired crinkly look.

My mom really liked the quilt when she received it. It will hopefully keep her warm through the winter months.

Baby Squares Quilt: Complete

Here it is! The pictures were taken a day before the quilt was given to my coworker, Jon for his brand new baby boy, who was due to arrive 2 days before by baby girl. I hope he likes it!

I tried out diagonal quilting on this for the first time (not stitch-in-the-ditch!) I think it turned out pretty well!

I thought this was kind of appropriate as this was a baby quilt :)

This is quilting detail

Squares Baby Quilt: Top Complete

My top is complete! It is actually basted and ready to quilt at this point. Here is a picture:

I think it actually turned out pretty well! My failed plan was to add flannel as backing. Well, the flannel was 42.5" wide and this quilt is 43.5" x 43.5". So it will have cotton backing which thankfully was 44" wide. I just hope that my quilting works out. The hope is to do diagonals.

Secret Project: Fabrics

I am making a super secret project, which will be revealed when the top is done. I did get the fabrics in the mail the other day:

These are for the top. I am dragging my feet picking out the backing and the binding, partially because I am not following any pattern in particular (rather various quilts I have seen), so I have been too lazy to sit down and figure out the dimensions....

In case you can't see them too well it is Pom Pom de Paris by French General for Moda Fabrics:

Pinwheel Sampler: Top Done!

The top is done!!! Yay! I have decided to do a thin sashing on it (1"). I am quite happy with the way it turned out. There are a couple of blocks that I wasn't 100% happy with, but I think all together they look quite nice.

This is probably a better picture of it:

For sashing I decided to do mitered borders. Since there were essentially 2 borders, the cream and the pink, the method that I was taught, was to attach the borders together first, then attach them to the quilt, then miter them. Here is a picture of the final result of the mitering:

I have to say that mitering is hard to do! I am not sure when I will be brave enough to try it again. I learned a couple of things from this quilt: firstly, the cream fabric was much thinner then the rest of the fabric. That Made it much harder to work with, because it would arch and gather until I would iron, and that would not be permanent either. Secondly, my 1/2 square triangle units are 2" finished. The sashing was 1". I was going to quilt it in diagonal lines going through the middle of each 1/2 square triange units, but then the problem is that now my lines can extend only as far as the single square, because if I were to make a continuous line through the sashing, it would hit the next square in a weird place...

Squares Baby Quilt: Fabrics

I started a new project: a baby quilt for a co-worker that is having a baby boy! I am using this tutorial from the moda bake shop. Here are the fabrics I am using:

Aren't they pretty? This is Meadow Friends Boy Line by Deb Stain for Moda. I am close to being done with the blocks, so hopefully I will post a picture soon!

Pinwheel Sampler: All Blocks are Done!!

I finally finished making all 9 blocks! I have made more 1/2 square triangle units then I care to count. Scaling down the size of the blocks also made this process somewhat tedious. Next step is sashing! Here are the last 3 squares. I love how all 3 of them turned out!

"Star Pinwheel" from this tutorial. This one is really pretty. I like how it turned out!

"Spinning Pinwheel" from this tutorial. I love this one, because I was able to use 3 different prints, and I love how the pink is on the outside, it kind of looks like the dragonflies are flying away :)

"Flying Pinwheel" from this tutorial.

Here are all the blocks together. I haven't decided how I want to arrange them, but I like the way they look all together!