Hero's Houndstooth!

This blanket has been about a year and a half in the making. I bought the Houndstooth pattern from V and Co in October 2011 (on a side note, V and Co has a bunch of new patterns and they are all awesome!!). The original plan was to make him the quilt for that Christmas, and it didn't happen.

Then I talked about when I bought the fabric, wanting to make it for Hero's birthday in this pre-baby to do list post (April 2012). That didn't happen either...

I finally cut the fabric when Dragon was a few months old, then worked on it stage by stage, whenever I had time. Well, here we are (March 2013), and it's done!!

I was going to do the top in both the blue and orange, but decided it would look too intense and dark. I changed it so that Hero's would be blue and white, with orange binding; then Dragon's would be the opposite.

I machine quilted on the white only with white thread (an idea I picked up here).

I especially love the look that quilting created on the grey backing!

And thanks to my husband for holding it up for me to photograph.

This was my first free motion quilting experience. It was so much fun! I looked up a bunch of how-to videos on YouTube, but don't have a specific one I'd recommend. I just watched some, then decided it was time to dive in! After a small practice scrap piece, I just went for it! Sink or Swim!!!

There is a quick learning curve and while the first few rows have larger uneven stitches, and tiny uneven stitches, I was getting pretty good at the end! It took me a week to quilt it, and that was taking my time, working on it only a row at a time when the kids were sleeping. 

If you are hesitating on trying machine quilting, DON'T! It's not as hard as it seams, and it's SO FUN!!

I had some help getting the binding prepped, and spent a week hand stitching the binding into place.

At every stage of the sewing process, I would ask Hero if he was excited for a new blanket or if he liked it. He would tell me that it was nice and looked good, but that he didn't want it. "I have a blanket," he would say. But now that it's done and on his bed, he has accepted it and told me it was awesome.

I already have Dragon's and Pretty's Houndstooth quilt fabrics cut, it's just a matter of sewing them... maybe in the next few years, I'll get them all done!

Birthday Card Quilt

Wow, it's been a good while since I posted anything. I have excuses, but the most relevant one is that I'm busy enjoying the summer with my kids. But I did want to post about this project.

At the beginning of the month I mentioned that I was machine quilting my first quilt. Well, it was this big "Birthday Card Quilt" for my mom. 

As you can see, my mom just turned 50. Our family always has a pot luck breakfast to celebrate the 4th of July. This year, we turned it into a surprise birthday party for Mom! 

Everyone ate, played and of course, signed the quilt.

It was my mom who taught me how to sew and to piece quilt. I knew she would appreciate the work it took to make. It was a fun project for me because I was able to take ideas from blogs I love and sketch out a one-of-a-kind blanket just for Mom.

Don't you love the crazy scribbles of sketching? Ignore the math...

After I figured out just how I wanted to do it, I made the back first. I kind of based it off of this beautiful quilt over at Noodlehead. (I actually took a lot of advice from this post by Anna, about her quilt.)

And the front was based off of this adorable baby quilt by V and Co.

I used picnik.com to print out the letters. There were large enough, and enough of them, that I needed two pages. The first one, I printed normal and had to trace on the back of them to get the backwards on my Heat 'n' Bond. But then I remembered that picnik has a feature where you can reverse the images. So I did that for the second page. It just makes it less likely to mess up if they are already backward for you.

Anyway, I traced the letters backward on the Heat 'n' Bond, then ironed them onto the wrong side of my fabric.

 Then I cut them out, peeled the back, pinned and then ironed them into place.

Because Heat 'n' Bond will eventually dissolve, I stitched the letters down with the blanket stitch function on my machine.

I used the sandwich tutorial from Oh Fransson! to make this:

So many safety pins! I used regular safety pins, instead of "quilting pins".

I then used this tutorial for straight-line machine quilting. I used masking tape, and spaced them 2 inches apart, because it was easy with my 2-inch-wide ruler.

I sewed along the edge like I was told...

When it came to the words, I taped right across them, and then just back stitched at the beginning and end, just skipping over them.

For the binding I used this tutorial by Crazy Mom Quilts. The tutorial was easy to follow, and I chose to hand quilt it for a nice clean look.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you!

Quilt Anxiety

I've got the front and back pieced together.

I've made my quilt sandwich (using this awesome tutorial that I was directed to by Noodlehead).

And now it's just sitting there. Waiting.

I'm nervous about this first machine quilting experience. It's a smaller quilt, and I'm doing a simple straight line design. I eventually want to do free motion quilting, but I need to work up to it.

Deep breath and GO! Wish me luck!!