girl quilt

Okay, so here is another quilt that I just finished. It will go to the same home as the crazy baby quilt.  There are 3 girls in that home so all of them will get a quilt.  I followed a pattern for this one that one of my students gave me. 

 It was a fun block that actually allows you to create several different looks just depending on how you position the blocks.

 This is a close up of some of the machine quilting that I did.  It is hard to see here but I put a flower in the middle of every block.  It was kind of fun!  This is the first time that I have tried to do a picture rather than just an all over design and for the most part I was really happy.  So I did the individual flowers and then just did an all over design for the rest of the quilting. 

Here is the back...she obviously likes pink! 

fall time quilt

I do occasionally do quilts that are not for babies.  This is one of them.  I use this one in my home year round because I really like to colors and it matches my dark brown couches, but I think of it as a fall time quilt.  This is also the first quilt that I did free-motion quilting on!  I chose to only quilt in the background color which really made the other colors stand out.  I did use a pattern on this quilt (which is not super common with me) that I found in a magazine.  The one in the magazine was meant for little kids, I think they talked about it as a good nap time quilt, so mine looks different.  That is actually one of my favorite things about quilting is that you can make the exact same quilt with different fabrics and you get a completely different product.

Below is the close up of the quilting.  This quilt has actually been washed a few time and the stitching is hard to see...maybe if I get a better picture I can post it, but the stitching is pretty close together which made a really nice texture on the quilt.

I forgot a picture of the back, so if I ever get one I will update.

crazy baby quilt

Okay, so here it is.  I actually saw one similar to this on pintrist that gave me the idea.  I started with one yard of white fabric and had to cut strips out and then add colored strips in.

It looks not as good in this picture because it has been folded up at home for several days and I didn't want to wash or iron it before I took the picture.  I figure you guys can get the idea from this picture. 

This is a close up of the stitching.  I did free motion stitching in the white sections.  I used variegated thread and I alternated between two colors of it.  One spool had blues and purples and the other spool had pinks. 

This is the back of the quilt.  I like to spend some time making the backs look cute.  This was my first attempt and applique and I think it turned out nice and I just hope that it holds up in the wash...if not I guess it is the back of the quilt.

And finally, just to see how the two sides work together.

fat eighths baby quilt

 Okay, so this is my first attempt at a blog and I am pretty sure that nobody will look, but I know that I look online a lot for pictures of my next quilt and I finally decided that my pictures were also worth posting.  I have only been quilting for 4 or 5 years or so but recently most of my choices for what I do next have come from pictures that I find online. 

This first quilt that I have finished to post a picture of is below.  This is also the first quilt that I used a package of fabrics for.  I ordered a group of fat eighths and then added the white fabric to go with it.  To be honest, I loved how it turned out, but it might be a little to matchy (I know this is not a word, but oh well) to me.  I really like to pick out the fabrics and coordinate everything so not really doing that meant it was not quite as fun for me to do the quilt.  I also like my quilts to be just a little crazy or bright or something and this one didn't do that, so in retrospect I am not sure that I will order fabric again this way.  Just in case somebody wants to do a similar quilt I ended up cutting the fat eighths into 2.5" strips and sewing them together with a white piece of the same width.  Then I cut the three strips that were sewn together into 6.5" squares and then just alternated them back and forth.  I accentuated the zig-zag idea in the way that I organized the blocks and in the way that I quilted with the darker color through the white fabric. 

I recently got a new machine, an Elna excellence 760 and am totally in love with it!  I like to use fun stitches to quilt with and this next picture shows two of them.  I was really happy to find the cherry stitch to coordinate with the fabric.

As you can see I used variegated thread and I really like the effect it had on this quilt.

Finally I used a piece of flannel for the back.  I like to do a lot of fun things with the back, but this time I just found a nice piece of flannel.  I think that putting soft fabric on the back of a baby quilt is nice for the baby.  When I send them out of state I don't always do this as flannel can be really warm, but here in Oregon the flannel is nice most of the year!

Okay, so here you can see how it coordinates. 

I think that I will be able to find a few more pictures of past quilts that I will post.  I also just recently finished a quilt that I am very happy with and is very original.  When I remember to take a photograph I will post that one as well. 

Well, here's hoping that somebody sees the picture and is inspired in some way...that is usually how I decide to do my next quilt.