Lola gets jealous whenever I work on something. Right now she’s sitting on the desk, inches away from the keyboard. It’s a good thing she’s so darn cute . . .
Work in Progress: nautical baby quilt
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Tag Archives: quilt
WIP: nautical baby quilt
I did some rearranging in my craft area and made an impromptu design wall with a fleece blanket that I had taken camping just the night before. I can see the allure of design walls now, I think I may have to come up with a more permanent/practical solution when I have some spare time.
WIP: top secret friendship quilt
In between all the blue nautical quilt brainstorming I’ve been finishing up a very special quilt for a friend who had an unfortunate event happen to her. A bunch of us decided to work together to produce a quilt for her. It was slow collecting up the individual blocks from everyone, and then I was on holidays/busy with life, but I recently found the time to stitch up all the blocks and now I’m onto quilting!
Here are a few shots of the quilt all jumbled on my sewing desk, in the process of quilting. I made sure that nothing is too recognizable, in case the recipient happens upon this page.
Playing around: more nautical baby quilt brainstorming
My labour day deadline is fast approaching, so I need to start making decisions. I keep flip flopping back and forth between a classic or a freeform look for the quilt.
Classic triangles?
Modern free form waves?
I started my shopping, as I’m committed to my beach blue colour scheme. Last Friday I biked up to Effiloché, a nearby store filled with neat fabrics (and knitting yarn as well). I browsed about and was happy to pick out a few blues. Then back at home I made an order with Sew Fresh Fabrics, one of my favorite Etsy fabric shops. Now I get to patiently wait for my package to arrive. Or maybe not 
I think I’m going to start playing around a bit in anticipation.
Blue Fat Quarters from Effiloché
Playing around: nautical baby quilt brainstorming
I’ve made quite a few greenish themed baby quilts over the last couple of years, so I’m ready for something new. I’m thinking nautical themed. Lots of blue and yellow and white and red. Maybe some grey thrown in to balance things out.
I’m starting with a really neat fat quarter of fabric I bought while in Paris, at a quilting shop called Le Rouvray:
Moucheron #3 Marine
Isn’t it neat? It’s called “moucheron”, as in “little flies”.
It reminds me a lot of the time we spend in New Brunswick visiting family. Here are some pictures from previous trips:
Back to fabric!
I hunted around a bit on etsy and found this beautiful blue sailboat fabric:
The Fleet Navy from Seven Seas – Cloud9 Organic fabrics
Then I found lots more neat stuff:
Fish Scale in Tea by Alexander Henry Fabrics
Mountainz in Mint from Monsterz – Cloud9 Organic
Scribble in Gray from Happy Drawing – Cloud9 Organic fabrics
Static in Yellow from Monsterz – Cloud9 Organic fabrics
There’s more where that came from, you can check out my nautical quilt brainstorming board over on pinterest.
Inspiration: tote bags and roofs
I never know where inspiration is going to strike next, so I like to take snapshots with my iphone when I can. I couple of neat images from the last couple of days:
Most grocery stores here in Montreal charge for plastic bags, as an incentive to get people to use reusable bags, so I have quite the collection. The one on the left is from my most recent Ikea shopping trip and reminds me lots of my black and white and red quilt I’m working on. It’s going to go to work to be my permanent “I have too much stuff to carry in my hands to get to my meeting” bag. The one on the right was bought at Hema in Amsterdam, when I needed an extra bag to tote around some stuff while on vacation. It’s a nice size, not too big, and best of all has a zipper! I like the mutted grey and red/pink of the floral design.
At work one of my current projects is overseeing the complete replacement of a 100+ year old copper and slate roof. I consider myself so lucky to get to go up on the scaffolding and get up close and personal with the roof on a regular basis. Aren’t those slate tiles neat? I especially like the scalloped edged ones.
Playing around: black & white & red (2012.04.23)
Some grey too.
Playing around: scraps leftovers from cutting charms
I’m playing around with some scraps I had from cutting up my purple fabric for that massive colour wheel swap (all done cutting, phew!) and a few strips from a grey jelly roll. At first I was leaning towards a more modern zig zag, but I think I like the pinwheel like design more. Choices . . .
The colours are a bit off (thank you lack of natural light + iphone!), but at least its a good visual of the contrast.
Swaps: Breakfast for Dinner Rainbow Charm Swap
A few weeks ago I noticed that one of the blogs I follow in my google reader, from the blue chair, was hosting a rainbow charm swap. I got excited. I remembered seeing pictures the first time around and thinking “lucky people! look at all those rainbow coloured charm squares they get to play with!”. The idea is simple: everyone signs up and then colours are assigned. Everyone takes five different fabrics in that hue (four prints and one solid), cuts them into charm squares, and sends them in. Then you get back a charm from everyone else. Send in five sets of 56 charms (or more, 56 sets of five charms) and get back 280 different charms.
I made a mental note to sign up . . . and promptly forgot about it. Mental notes don’t generally work all that well for me, at work I always have so much info swirling around that if I don’t write it down in my trusty black notebook, or stick a reminder in Outlook, it’s gone. So I was a bit disappointed to hear that the swap was full. But then as luck would have it, someone who missed out decided to host their own! And that someone is Breakfast for Dinner (thank you!!!). A swap AND a new blog to follow? Excellent!
This time around I set an Outlook reminder, and didn’t miss it! I was assigned Purple (along with a couple of other swap participants), and here are my colour choices:
#1 Pattern: Kate Spain Terrain in Lichen
#2 Pattern: Anthology Fabrics Bonjour Oval Eyelet
Pattern#3: Jewels in Purple from Outfoxed by Lizzy House
Pattern#4: Meadow in Purple from Sleeping Beauty
Solid: Dark Violet – Kona by Robert Kauffman
Now for the hard part: waiting for the fabric to arrive!
That baby quilt, it’s finished!
And just in the nick of time as well, the shower was on Saturday! I had just enough time to finish sewing on the binding Friday evening, wash and dry it Saturday morning, and sew up a matching bag to package it all up before heading over to the shower.
This was my first time trying rounded corners, and I loved it! I make my own binding (cut on the bias), so it curved nicely around the corners. NO MITERING! I know, mitering isn’t THAT bad, but still, this was so easy. And it looks cute (or at least I think so).
It was well received too. Which is just the icing on the cake
Next up: I found out another family member is expecting a girl soon! Exciting! It seems in the last couple of years everyone has been having boys, and while I’m not one to push pink (I love pink, but don’t feel the need to push gender stereotypes on anyone), I think I may have to give in and go with some traditionally girly colours, just because *I* love them. Let me go put on my thinking cap to see what I can come up with.
