"Whimsy Baby" finish!

And so the blogging/crafting slump continues. But! Since little Miss Maddie has finally received her quilt, I can at long last share the finished project with you. Yay!

This is "Whimsy Baby":

The design is from a Moda Bakeshop tutorial by Lisnaweary Quilts, the "Criss Cross Quilt." I used two charm packs of the wonderful "Whimsy" line from Fig Tree Quilts, which is the basis of the name of the quilt as well.

The charm pack included some light creamy marble print squares. They were so light that I felt like I needed to use them a little differently. So I created some embroidery designs inspired by the style of the illustrations in some of the prints (you can read a little more about their creation in this earlier post). Those embroidered squares really give this quilt a little something extra special.

The binding is a French General fabric I thought coordinated nicely.

The back is made from some fabric I've had in my stash for quite awhile (it is "Paisley Panache" from Northcott). It is not really a match to the front at all, but I think it works.

The label.

This quilt was a long time in the making. I just looked back and am rather shocked to find that I started it last May! The top was done by mid-August. I know I was indecisive about how I wanted to quilt it. But boy... last May? At least I finished it before little Maddie's first birthday! Mostly though, I'm just happy she finally has her quilt and is able to enjoy it now.

One Thing, One Week Challenge: Gettin' my quiltin' on!

For this week's One Thing, One Week Challenge at Amy's Creative Side, my focus was to quilt my Whimsy project.

Success!!! I went a little out of my box on this one by trying out straight-line quilting with my walking foot. I did end up doing a tiny bit of free-motion around the embroidery (just outlining the stitched circles), but everything else was with the walking foot. I'm glad I gave it a go as it is a fun look, but I learned that it is really not my favorite style to quilt. Free-motion is more challenging for me, but it is also more fun.

Next up: binding!

If you get a chance, take some time to browse through the other challenge participants' successes-- there is always lots of awesome creative energy and inspiration to be found!

Another challenge week + pillow

Amy at Amy's Creative Side announced the latest One Thing, One Week Challenge yesterday. I immediately jumped on the bandwagon!

For the last challenge, I pushed myself to get my Whimsy quilt basted.

This time, I want to get it quilted!

In other news, another birthday party = another Personalized Name Pillow:

Again, I used minkee for the back of the pillow. It has been received so well each time, I think that minkee is going to be my go-to choice for these pillows.

This is my fourth iteration of this design, and I'm finally starting to get the hang of hand stitching the open edge (if you look closely, you can see the line of hand-stitching in the picture above). I'm usually pretty good at this kind of thing, but trying to make my stitches look clean and happy with the combo of minkee and cotton has been challenging.

Seriously, this pattern rocks. So simple, and so happy!

This week in the quilt mines...

...was a little on the slow side. First Little Bear got sick, followed by Big Bear and Papa. It was not a healthful week here in the Crafty Musings house!

On the bright side:

I did manage to meet my goal for this week's One Thing, One Week Challenge at Amy's Creative Side! Woo! I am very happy to report that I managed to get the basting done on my Whimsy quilt. I had hoped to maybe start quilting it, but it was not meant to be last week. Maybe this week?

If you get a chance, check out what some of the other intrepid One Weekers accomplished this week-- it is always very inspiring!

One Thing, One Week Challenge returns!

Amy over at Amy's Creative Side is again hosting the One Thing, One Week Challenge. Yay! I love these challenges. They work really well for me as motivation to accomplish something (especially those somethings that maybe I'm not so motivated to do otherwise).

Remember this project?

Ha! Even I only vaguely remember this project. I actually completed the top way back in June and it has been languishing on top of my needs-to-be-quilted pile ever since. The baby I'm making it for is now 7 months old, so I need to get going!

So, for this week's challenge, my goal is to get the Whimsy quilt basted and (fingers crossed) maybe even start quilting it.

This week in the quilt mines...

My husband calls my sewing room the "quilt mines" (*crack!*) <-- sound of cracking whip. Ha! Anyway, Little Bear is finally starting to sleep through the night. Huzzah! The only downside is that he now wakes up at 6 am, so my late night crafting has really slowed down (I'm just too sleepy!). But I do have some projects moving along, slowly but surely.

Some handwork:


Embroidery complete! Now I need to work on getting all of my sashing sewn for my Whimsy quilt.

Some machine work:


I've started on my next Amy Butler project for the Style Stitches Monthly Bag Challenge: the Perfectly Pleated Clutch. I've decided that pleating is definitely NOT my favorite thing to do. But boy, does it look cool!

And another bucket hat:


This one is for baby Sarah. Her mama made a super cute crocheted hat for Little Bear. I had to reciprocate. Once again, I used the ever-fabulous Betz White Reversible Bucket Hat pattern. I added a little ric-rac trim to the brim just for a little extra cuteness.

It is too small to fit my boys, so here it is on another bear:


Hopefully, I'll get to spend some more time in the quilt mines over the weekend. *crack!*

A little something

I've had a little bit of time to start working on my Criss Cross Quilt and ran into an unexpected, but fun, challenge. The Whimsy charm packs included 4 squares of a creamy near-solid print that I had to figure out how deal with. I decided that they would be perfect for a little bit of embroidery.


I went ahead and pieced the blocks first (a la Little Miss Shabby).

Then I looked to the fabric for inspiration for my designs.


Initially, I was thinking that I'd just grab a couple of the designs and embroider them. But then I noticed this print:


The words that are colored are the ones that are featured in the fabric drawings. But then there are all of those other words... why not use them to inspire my own drawings? So I looked to the Internet for some visual inspiration to get me going, did some sketching (LOTS of trial and error was involved for each... I was trying really hard to kind of keep the vintage flavor of the drawings in the fabric) and now I have my designs all set:


I'm excited because I think these will really add a little something to the quilt and make it special.

Time to do some embroidery!

A fresh start

Because I don't have enough other projects to keep me entertained (ha!), I've started up a new one. Really though, I'm feeling weighed down by my surplus of large, complicated projects, and want something smaller and more manageable (and, dare I say it: finishable!). Besides, I have a friend with a baby on the way who's gonna need a quilt!

The project:
Criss Cross Quilt by Lisnaweary Quilts for Moda Bake Shop.

The fabric:
Whimsy by Fig Tree Quilts for Moda + Kona cotton Snow.


Progress:
It is all cut out and ready to be stitched. This is my first attempt at using a Moda Bake Shop "recipe" and I've already experienced some frustration. My preference is to do all of my major cutting up front, and then stitch. I like doing it this way because it feels more efficient and because my cutting space and my sewing space are not one and the same (meaning I have to get up and go somewhere else whenever I want to do any big cutting). Anyway-- because of this, I really prefer my instructions to have cutting directions grouped together in one section so I can do it all at once. In this particular set of instructions they are not.

It's a small thing and truly a matter of personal preference, but having been sleep deprived for more than a year, parsing out the cutting stuffs actually ended up being kind of a pain for me and resulted in a couple of (fortunately not irreparable) mistakes. Hopefully I'll do better with the stitching part! :)