Moving Right Along

As soon as I finished Remy's quilt after months of careful piecing and design, I started a simpler, but still detailed, quilt.  This quilt is probably made of just as many pieces, but they went together so much faster!

I used this technique to piece together 300 3" squares super-quickly.  There's none of that one-piece-at-a-time nonsense this way, and the points come out just perfectly.  Every time.

Look how much was lost to seam allowance in the first row!

I had fun sticking 300 individual squares on my design board and trying to make it look both random and balanced.  Although it took up the whole design board before they were sewn together, the finished product is a little baby quilt only about 3'x4'.  This one is for one of the chief residents at Josh's program that just had a little girl this week!

Little Gifts

Last week I had a farewell party for a work friend and a baby shower for another friend.  I made a couple little gifts for these hello and goodbye occasions.

First is a little appliqued wall hanging for my work friend.  At the Red Cross (like most workplaces, I'm sure) we use a ton of acronyms.  We send DATs on DRs and they need to have CPR and AED training and we ask our MGOs to find gifts to make it all possible.  Right?  There's a lot to absorb when you're a new employee.  So my co-worker started using extra abbreviations to poke fun; she particularly got a kick of calling the restroom the "LGR" (Little Girls' Room) to discreetly say it was time for a break from marathon meetings.  Our team thought it would be nice for her to have something to remind her and so I made this:

I just found a font I liked on the computer to print out, traced the letters on to a two sided fusible paper which I then fused to my fabrics, cut them out, ironed them on to some natural linen, and did a zig zag stitch around the sides.  I made it 8x10 so we could put it into a cute little frame for her to hang in her own LGR!

Secondly, I made this for a friend who is having a little boy in July:

I couldn't not buy this tiny Columbia fleece.  It's the cutest thing I've seen in my entire life.  Baby Greer will be about 6 months old in the winter, which is the size of the jacket, so it seemed too perfect to pass up.  I had the blue part of the hat mostly done when I got the jacket and found some matching green yarn in my stash, which, again, seemed too perfect to pass up.

It's nice to have smaller projects than quilts sometimes for some more instant gratification!

Dainty

Whew!  Though small, my latest labor of love took a while to make, but I'm so very happy with the finished product!

I made this for little Remy Willis.  Josh grew up with a good dude named Brad; Brad and his wife Megan had a baby girl a couple months ago.  With two parents in the military, I bet she is going to be one tough girl, but I just made her a very dainty quilt.  Most of the fabric is from the Swell set by Urban Chiks for Moda, which I picked for the variety of patterns and colors.  Josh was not convinced by my vision at first, but he conceded that it might be the best quilt I've ever made!  I quilted roses in an all-over pattern throughout it, and did I mention I am so very happy with the finished product?