Oh, Hello

Hmm, let's see.  Things I've done since last July...  We took 3 month old Jess on a hiking vacation to Colorado and New Mexico.  We bought a house in Boring, Oregon.  We named the house Hoquarton. We invited some friends to move into the basement and put a kitchen down there so they have their own apartment.  Josh started at a private practice.  And I made exactly one quilt.

It was supposed to be a Christmas present, but we just got it in the mail last week.  Oops!  My excuses are as follows:
1.  I was still the gift processor for the Red Cross, a job I supposedly left almost a year ago.  But as I am still on the payroll and the need remained, they would drive the gifts out to me in Boring so I could work from home with the baby.  As you can imagine, the holidays and year-end are an incredibly busy giving season!  I did train someone to take over in January, which has been a relief.
2.  We were building that kitchen.
3.  I really did sew other Christmas presents that arrived in a much more timely manner!

See!  There's a purse, two skirts, a fabric-scrap book about colors, a homemade memory game, and a little crocheted hat for our nieces!

Enough with the excuses!  Here is the quilt I made for Josh's mom:

She loves Taos, New Mexico, which was part of our summer trip with the baby.  I was inspired by that to make a sampler of sorts.  Each block design appears twice in varying colors.  It was interesting how much that changed the look of some of them.  Here are a couple of my favorite blocks:

And here is my cute little helper who was quite sure that we went out to the deck to pictures of him.

Family History in Fabric

A few months ago, Josh brought home an old quilt top that belonged to one of his coworkers. It was hand pieced by her grandmother out of fabric from clothes that belonged to her mother and her mother's siblings.  The top was beautiful, but there were some holes in the fabrics and some of the seams were coming apart.  She had heard I quilted and asked Josh if I could perhaps repair and finish it.

I'd never worked with anything like this before, but I did some research on restoring old quilts and decided I was game to give it a try.

First, I squared up the quilt, cutting off some raggedy edges.  This gave me some pieces of fabric from one side that were big enough to make patches.  With those scraps and some from my own stash, I made some patches that I pressed on with double sided adhesive paper.  I made sure to match the edge of the patches with existing seams so they looked natural in the quilt blocks.  Then I basted the top with batting and backing that she picked out.

I quilted it by just going over all of the seams because the pattern of the top was so interesting that I didn't want to add another pattern with the quilting.  In doing so, I was also able to reinforce the original seams, repair the ones that had come apart, and sew down the edges of the patches I had applied.  I also like seeing the unique shape of each block on the back of the quilt.

This quilt was fun to work on and neat to see completed.  Kara and her mom were excited about having it back in a usable condition and I was glad to be a part of the story of this family treasure!

Back in the Saddle

Well, everybody, I'm feeling human again!  Jess is two months old, quite long (24.5 inches), and super chatty.  We're getting into a nice little routine together and that has made time for me to do some quilting and some Red Cross work again.

Officially, my Red Cross position goes away at the end of this month because of some national consolidations.  I wasn't planning to return after Jess was born, but I've gone back to work on a "consulting" basis until they're done with the transition to the new processes.  As of July 1, though, I can consider myself retired!

So when I haven't been snuggling my baby or back at work, I've been working on a quilt for the lovely Remington Bentley.  Remmy was born about five weeks after Jess and is already winning the hearts of the boys in her life.  Jess and Josiah got their first chance to compete for her affections last weekend!  Poor Josiah was at a disadvantage, having been given her feet:

Anyhow, Remmy's mom, Nike, had commented that these were her favorite quilts I'd done in the past:

I think the most striking thing these quilts have in common is that they used a wider variety of fabrics in smaller pieces.  So, with that in mind, I picked a bunch of fabrics in Nike's nursery colors (lavender and sage) and went to work!

I used the Kitchen Window block from Elizabeth Hartman's Practical Guide to Patchwork and followed her recommendation to make the "panes" scrappy so I could use a lot of different fabrics.  The blocks are 16x16" though, so I ended up with a long, skinny quilt top (her guide is for a full sized quilt and I was cutting it down to baby size).  So I added a strip made of all the different fabrics I used down the middle to make it a better shape.

To go with her colors, Nike picked a nature theme for Remmy's nursery.  So I quilted this swirly tree on each of the window blocks and surrounded them in circles that make me think of cobblestones or a creek bed.

Lastly, here is a picture of Remmy looking at Jess like he's the dreamiest boy she's ever seen.

Reese Niece Number 3!

Josh and I were a bit relieved when we found out we were having a boy because the existing Reese Girls, courtesy of Josh's brother, are the most awesome and adorable:

Before I sneaked into the hospital one night while Josh was on call so we could "borrow" an ultrasound machine to find out what kind of baby we're having, the "Other Reeses" came up to Oregon for a visit.  I was 10 weeks pregnant at the time, and we had decided not to tell them because five-year-olds are good at repeating things they hear - and we weren't ready to spread the news just yet.  But on the first day of our vacation, Dave and Ruth told us they were expecting!  Josh and I didn't react with hearty congratulations right away because we were so surprised.  Especially when they said Ruth was 10 weeks along, too!  After some frantic texting across the living room, and what I'm sure they thought was the weirdest response ever to such fantastic news, we let them know that we were in the same boat.  The exact same boat.  Crazy.

In fact, years ago, I had a dream that Ruth and I were pregnant at the same time.  In my dream we were both having boys and were racing to see who could have theirs first because we wanted to use the same name.  Until their ultrasound, I thought maybe I could have been a prophet, but we diverged from my dream's plot and discovered they were bringing another most-excellent girl into the world.

We're both still waiting on these moseying Reese babies, but I finally finished a quilt before a baby was born!

The blocks came together very quickly, but I mixed it up in the sashing by adding those pinwheels.  I think the simple blocks, mix of fabrics, and pinwheel sashing ended up working really well together! Here is a closer shot so you can see more of the fabrics:

And a picture of the backing where you can see the roses I quilted all over:

This quilt was really fun to make; and it put me back on schedule with my quilt making!  Oh my goodness, I can't wait for Reese Niece #3!

Seeing Spots

My oldest friend in the world had a baby just a couple weeks ago!  Crystal and I met when we were around 3 years old, grew up together, were roommates in college, and now are having sons just a month apart.  Well, the due dates said it would be just a month apart, but little Josiah Wright decided to make his debut a tad early (not that I would object to mine doing the same).

Crystal has always loved giraffes and decided to do the nursery in a giraffe theme.  I figured she would get a lot of giraffe things, and she knows a lot of crafty people, so I tried to think of a way of making a giraffe quilt that no one else would think of.  This is what I came up with:

I appliqued giraffe spots onto squares to make a big giraffe print.  I was originally just going to use browns on the applique squares, but it struck me that I could incorporate her other nursery colors into the zigzag stitches around each spot!

I quilted around each spot in both light brown and dark brown so you can see the spots on the back side as well.

It took some time to figure out how to draw the spots so they looked good.  After trying to arrange random spots on a square, Josh advised me to notice how the spots fit together like puzzle pieces in the fabric that had the giraffe print on it already.  So then, I cut the applique paper into squares the size of my background fabric and sketched out an entire square as a cohesive unit.  They came together so quickly after that!  That Josh has a good eye.  And the observation came in handy when I frosted these cookies for Crystal's baby shower as well:

Quilty Catch Up Part 4

Last Christmas I made a quilt for Mema and Pepa.  I may have said on the blog that it was the best quilt I'd ever made; but I forgot to take pictures of it before we boxed it up, so I couldn't prove it.

Well, we surprised Josh's parents and grandparents by showing up in Tulsa for Christmas this year, and I was happy to see that Mema and Pepa keep the quilt out in their living room!  Since they didn't know we were coming, I think that means they really liked it!  I snapped a couple photos on my phone to share.

You can see in the last picture that I fussy-cut the cream fabric on the border to better frame the blocks. I need to get better at planning block layout, though.  5x4 square quilts don't really allow for symmetry, so I remember agonizing over how to arrange the middle row so it would look good from any side.

I'm still hard at work on other folks' baby quilts, and am having a lot of fun playing with a variety of styles.  We're on vacation this week, and then it's my last week of work ever.  We'll see how things balance out after baby Reese comes and if I'll really end up with more creative time after all!

Quilty Catch Up Part 3

This next quilt was made for Susannah Molinaro (Sue-Mo for short!).  For once, I was on track to finish a baby quilt before a due date, but Susannah decided to come a little early.  Then I waited for a dry day to take pictures of the quilt outside.  It's Oregon.  I waited a couple weeks.  But I was excited about the way the bright quilt looked outside on a grey day:

Although the fabrics made me think of fresh fruits for some reason, I quilted tulips on the squares.  For the border, I free handed some swirly, ribbon-like lines that followed the idea of the lines that connected the tulips.  I was pleasantly surprised at my success without using an image to trace!

I was also pleasantly surprised by this rose blooming in January.

Quilty Catch Up Part 2

The next quilt I made was for a graduated resident and her husband.  They decided not to find out what they were having until the baby was born.  But because of its parents, I knew that boy or girl, this baby would rock!

I was worried it might be too boyish, since it was heavy on the blue and green.  So Josh, in his professional medical opinion, suggested that I add some zebra print as the border.  I was once again impressed with his head for quilt design - I like the way the zebra turned out!  Once it was all together, I quilted some crazy lightning bolts on it, and we had a quilt fit for a future rock star.  With a future rock star name no less.  Odin McNeill, I'm especially happy with how your quilt turned out now that I know you're a boy!

Quilty Catch Up Part 1

Since I found out that I was pregnant in July, I have finished four complete quilts, one top, cutting for another, and I have one more to plan.  None of these seven quilts are for us.  Don't worry, I'm making lots of other things for our little guy, and my mom has him covered (ha! quilt pun!) in the quilt department.

All these quilts can only mean that Baby Season is upon us!  They always seem to come in waves, don't they?  I kicked it off in October with quilts for a fellow resident's new baby girl and older daughter, who is now a proud big sister.

This is the one I made for three year old Amani:

Using Elizabeth Hartman's Sparkle Punch Quilt instructions, I made wonky stars from bright, exciting colors I thought a three-year-old girl might squeal over.  The purple even has silver sparkles in it, which just seemed to fit the name of the quilt pattern.

Then I experimented with gathering pieces to make this quilt for baby Winnie:

I gathered center strips for some of the blocks and matched some to their base fabrics, and mixed up the rest.  The gathers made the squares look a little crooked as I put them together, but were easily manipulated back into their proper shape.  Even though I was a little afraid it wouldn't come out very square, they all turned out nicely.

Now the Christensens are a happy family of four!

Oh, I thought Super Bowl Sunday was an appropriate time to start my crafty catch up posts.  As a sports fan, I tried to get into the game, but I just couldn't.  My football season reached its peak yesterday when Adrian Peterson was named MVP!

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!

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?

Scraps

I will be ringing in the new year turning these

into these

I will probably also work on settling my disagreement with Ada about how much snuggling a dog should do, and maybe, if Josh isn't swamped, I'll hang out at the hospital.  It won't be the most glamourous of New Year's Eves, but I think it will be quite satisfying.  I hope everyone has a happy and safe last day of 2011!

Christmas Joys Abound

As I sat down to write this post, I realized I didn't take any pictures of probably one of the coolest things I've ever made before I sent it off as a present.  Oops.  I feel sheepish.

Here are some things I made and remembered to photograph:

This bear is for my friend Susan out of part of an unfinished family heirloom quilt top.  I think he looks quite distinguished in his leather chair.

This is the fourth quilt made from Susan's mom's gardening shirts.  It's for her nephew, so now all her mom's grandkids have one.  My mom made quilts out of my Grandpa's shirts for all of my cousins and me a couple years ago.  I love mine so very much; so I was happy to be able to make these meaningful quilts for Susan.

I made this pillow from linen for Josh's mom.  We brought back two bags of pine needles from Maine so she could have a pillow and a supply of delicious smelling potpourri (is it potpourri when it's not made from flowers?) to put in it.  It's got an envelope-style back so she can refill it with fresh needles every once in a while.

I made this scalloped hat for our one year old niece, Josie.

I made this butterfly hat for our nearly five year old niece, Abi.

It was hard to see the butterfly, so I stuffed it to get a better picture.  It looks kind of creepy.  I'm assuming it will look much cuter on the head of an adorable five year old.

Josh painted these for the girls and they match the mugs we got their parents at the Saturday Market last Christmas.  Now they have a family set!

I also crocheted some stuffed snowmen wearing tiny scarves, but I neglected to take their picture as well.  Don't hold it against me - things are a little hectic around here!  Aside from scrambling to get all my projects finished, we've been planning a trip to Costa Rica in January.  Additionally, December is the busiest month of the year in the non-profit world because everyone feels extra generous.  This is a wonderful phenomenon, but makes for long work days for me.  Lastly, my long work days are nothing compared to Josh's.  He is in the middle of 28 days of work without a day off.  That includes overnight every Saturday (Yes, Christmas Eve.  Yes, New Year's Eve.)  But the end of December means we are halfway through residency.  That sounds pretty nice!