I love this quilt.
But now I'm kinda wishing that I had swapped backs with the other All Star Quilt. Might have been more consistent-looking.
I will tell you, however, that it is made almost entirely from scraps that were salvaged from a friend's house. She would go quilt at the Senior Citizen's Center twice a week, and any time any families would have the contents of their grandmother's sewing room to get rid of, they would bring it there. She would pass along her good fortune to me -- and anyone else who was interested. I was very appreciative, since my husband was in grad school, and we had our 5th child on the way. There was not much (any) room in the budget for fabric.
I love traditional blocks -- especially stars. And I am quite patriotic, so I LOVE red, white, and blue quilts. I just don't think they ever date themselves. Or maybe by saying that I am revealing how uncool I truly am. I love how bright the white is, how true the red is, how bold the blue is.
Everything about this quilt just speaks to my soul. It took me a LONG time to make it -- all the log cabins were time consuming -- but I could not be happier with the outcome.
I added in a Quilter's Only brown, some robots whose origin I cannot recall (Michael Miller perhaps), and a teal paisley from something so long ago. I think the line was called Tiddly Winks. Okay. I just walked myself upstairs and looked at the selvage. It IS Tiddly Winks, and it's by Arrin Turnmire for Moda. I forgot to look at the date. I'm not walking back up there, but I'm gonna say it's at least 4 years old.
I know. I know. A white back on a baby quilt? It's what I had. I think it's cute. And it's too late to go back now. Incidentally, I did another baby quilt with these fabrics, and the front is mostly white while the back is mostly dark. I don't know why it worked out that way, but it did.
Yup, I bought a FQ pack, and I'm using it up for the back. Wow. That rhymed. Okay. I'll try to break it up by posting something a little different for tomorrow. Then I'll be back with two more baby quilts. 
Fabrics are Michael Miller's Zoo Baby, Ta-Dot, and who knows what else. The background fabric is Kona Charcoal (I hope that's right). LOVE this combination! I used Elizabeth's free pattern. And it's already in its new home.
This is one I designed myself. I don't like how wide the black strips are. They look fine with the bigger blocks but are ridiculously huge next to the smaller ones. I'm going to keep looking at this, though, because I like the idea of it.
Back. I was able to use up a lot of the purple that Jill sent me. I'm not a purple person, but I have a friend who loves purple and black together. I'm hoping this next baby of hers is a girl, so she can have this one.
My quilt group wanted to do a zigzag quilt a while back. I tell you, I am just as behind on my quilt group quilts as I am on my QALs. I guess we can just agree that I'm behind on nearly everything -- except baby quilts for upcoming births. I'm actually ahead there.
I just did some wavy lines to sort of look like ocean waves or currents or something. I like the curvy lines juxtaposed against the sharp, geometric shape of the zigzags. I like the movement it gives to the quilt.
It's made mostly with Heather Ross' Mendocino line in the orange/aqua colorway. I saw this on Nettie's blog. She was selling kits and had a tutorial. I didn't buy the kit, because I already had these fabrics, and I think I cut the squares to 5 1/2" or 6 1/2" just to make the quilt a little bigger. That seems like something I would do. ;)
The boys are excited to have something with no pink in it. And those Heather Ross fabrics are SO soft. This one is on my UFO Challenge for the year (see sidebar). I must confess that I have given up on trying to keep up with the right month. I got behind in about May, and now I'm just doggedly trying to finish them all this year period, whenever they get done. I have two and a half months to go and I have finished 10 out of 18. I need to go buy some batting and get going on the rest of them. I am determined. But of course, I need to basically finish one each week to get it all done. (Bites fingernails a little, a bad habit that was theoretically broken when she was 12.)
Okay. I'm off to buy some batting, then, I guess. I absolutely WILL NOT start my Swoon quilt until next year. I will NOT.
Two charm packs (plus backing fabric) make the whirligigs. Fabric requirements here. Instructions here.
Fabric is Martinique by 3 Sisters for Moda. I love the soft look that their fabrics lines always give. I'm not a pastel person really, but I just love their lines!
I love a good paisley. I am an 80s girl, and we loved us some paisley in that decade. I'm happy to see it coming back around -- and in such beautiful colors too.
I stippled this in a coral pattern, which I though was fitting since some of these fabrics have coral on them.
Possibly my favorite block.
Possibly my second favorite.
You might remember that Kerri was making this quilt and asked if anyone wanted to quilt along. I don't know if I quilted along on their schedule, but this is definitely the fastest I've ever finished a quilt-along.
Bliss dots for binding. Because I'm trying to finish a lot of things very quickly (because I'm tired of the ginormous number on my WIPs list), I have taken to binding by machine -- stitch onto the back, flip to the front, topstitch. I like the look of hand binding better, but this is going much faster. I'm into faster right now.
This is my second daughter's current favorite. It's smaller than I thought it would be (should've read the directions instead of skimming them), but it's a good size for her. I really love this one too. Kinda makes me wish I were a little shorter so my toes didn't stick out. Kinda.
This was Rachel's Pinwheel Sampler Quilt-Along from last year. Just now finished it, yup. I added a few extra pinwheels, because I wanted it to be a little bit longer.
Scrappy back made from whatever was left. I had found some other FQs on sale at my LQS. The fabrics are Aster Manor by 3 Sisters for Moda. That main brown on the back, however, is from Shangri-La -- also by 3 Sisters for Moda if I'm not mistaken.
Loopy meander. I'm in a hurry to finish a bunch, so I'm just using the ol' stand-by to bang these out. Also, I'm machine binding (gasp!). It's so much faster. Did I say that already?
The sunlight makes this harder to see, but I like this block. I wanted to try a different-colored background than just white or cream. This may be too dark, but in some ways I think it makes it more formal.
I love this simple, framed pinwheel. And these colors -- the coralish red with the browns and pinks -- these are my colors. I just love how cozy they feel to me. I tell you, I'm going to finish my UFO challenge by the end of this year -- even though I'm behind and even though I'm moving. I can do it!!! Right? I'll just keep saying that to myself over and over, and then maybe it'll come true.
This was my very first craft fair. I didn't know what to expect -- not from any craft fair, and certainly not from the birth fair. It was smaller than I expected. But I learned a few things, and I gained some experience on what things to prepare, what not to stress about. I'm sure each craft fair is different, though, too, so who knows if I learned the right things.
Ooh! Sorry about that reflection. I took a bunch of pictures of it, and they all came out with that same glare. And my pinwheel quilt looks cream. It's not. It's white. (Later posts to come for each of these quilts.)
Some women told me that they had seen my booth on Facebook, and that was the reason they came down to the birth fair. Well, at least it was pretty. No guts, no glory. I put myself out there, and I feel proud of myself. I really have never tried to sell anything that I have made, thinking it wasn't good enough or that people wouldn't value it. Well, they might NOT value it, but I learned that I know my own worth as a seamstress and a quilter. And it doesn't come from outside sources.
The initial plan was to put them on my girls' twin beds, but I didn't have a machine that could do free-motion quilting, and so they sat in the pile of flimsies waiting to be HAND quilted. Well, that pile grew pretty quickly. I liked to piece more than I liked to hand quilt. Anyway, now my girls are in a full-sized bed, the twin mattresses having been usurped by the boys for their bunk beds.
They are not identical. I just made random butterflies. Some of the fabrics are decidedly . . . unpretty, let's say. What did I know back then? Apparently, I did know that bright colors and white were the way to go. (May I just say that the triangle border took longer to make than the whole rest of the quilt top?!)
The idea was that the butterflies were to rest on top of the mattress and the squares to hang down. If I ever get these quilted, we'll see if they work out that way. I wonder what I have that can go on the back.
