Starting January With a Couple Finishes!

This may be the brightest quilt I've ever made! Whew! It was a doozy to work on. In fact, I didn't even realize how not relaxing it was to hand quilt, until I was more than halfway through. I kept wondering, why am I always putting off picking up my hoop? 

Cannot believe that this is a quilt made
by me. Unreal. So bright you need sunglasses!

I finally weathered through and wowsers! Does it have the sweetest, just washed and dried texture! I hand quilted around a lot of the flowers in the border print and that seemed like a good touch too. 

Very sweet cuddly vibe to it when crumpled

This quilt was started in October of 2020 after a weekend with family at the Oregon coast. I'm pretty sure the blue background fabrics were directly influenced by all the gorgeous coastal blues we experienced. 

Once again, the hand quilting helps
make the quilt look soooo much better!

Though the quilt top has been done since December of 2021, it definitely took me a lot of time to come around to wanting to dive into the hand quilting. And not just because of the loud colors! The only way I could think to hand quilt the blocks was to do echo stitching around the inside of the applique. Ughh. All those layers of fabric. Otherwise it probably would have had to be some sort of crosshatch pattern and that didn't interest me at all for this quilt. 

A little matchy matchy in the setting
triangles and border, but who cares??

Regardless, it turned out to be a very obnoxious, though deceptively sweet quilt that should make my granddaughter grin when she receives it. In fact, she already knows it's hers 'cuz she's been over here visiting a time or two while it was in the hoop. She's only three but she comes over to me while I'm quilting, and pats it a little possessively.  So cute. I'm pretty sure she likes it just fine!

Orphaned bits and pieces

A new great-niece arrived just after Christmas. Once it settled down around here, I made a plan for a new little, baby girl quilt. Just kidding. You know me. I basically raided the orphaned applique totes, sewed up three quick flower-in-a-basket blocks and then belatedly started wondering about the rest of the quilt. 

Backing made out of pieces from the stash

I ended up scrounging around till I found enough orphans for the center of the quilt too. The leftover patches just happened to be from the older sisters baby quilt, which I thought an interesting connection. 

Love the little applique blocks...

I decided to make four-patches but totally forgot about seam allowance when cutting. That made me grab the old fashioned lavender prints to enable making the 4-patch units large enough for adequately sized repeats. 

Softer looking in a crumple...

Bit by bit I assembled the top, making lots of mistakes along the way. Thankfully nothing that turned out to be a complete disaster, just time-sucking things that made me question my sanity. Remind me again why I make baby quilts for every niece & nephew plus the greats? Yeah I know, 'cuz they are sweet little critters and I love my family. 

The quilt was turned out kinda cozy but a little dull looking. Big surprise. All the deliberate color clashing that I just love to play with made for just way too much tension in the quilt. Thankfully I have tricks to fool everybody into thinking the quilt looks better than it does. Just add applique. It's like magic.*wink

Even the rosy pink binding played a part
in making it look better!

In the end, I deliberately added the green striped fabric in the center applique, which just so happened to be a match to some fabric in the older brothers baby quilt. So interesting that I still had some to play with! That fabric had just enough energy to play well with the rest of the quilt and take care of the 'dulled down' factor. That and the purple tulip cut down and reshaped from a bird motif basically saved the entire quilt. 

Still needs help

You can see it above just before sewing the rows together. I'd already switched the light, white squares from a busy print in an effort to lighten things up. It should have been obvious right then but I'm kinda stubborn sometimes. Especially when I'm in a hurry. Was trying to save on postage by sending the quilt with the grandparents!

Had to sandwich and pin 2 quilts before
moving the furniture back

Also managed to get another quilt in the hoop. This one is a little folksy. A little funky. And a little awkward looking which might actually make it more loveable? 

Next up in the hoop!

Hand quilting is moving along fairly well--all freehand Baptist fan quilting with no marking. I'm having a bit of a stretch problem in this striped fabric behind the large tulip duo though. It's not 100% cotton so that's my own fault. It's a {repurposed} 3x large mechanics shirt I found for cheap at the 2nd hand store years ago. Just could not resist throwing it into a quilt! Ah well. It's going to end up 'good enough' and it's not like this quilt is going to set the world on fire, right? Having fun with my quilting therapy and that's the only goal these days...