Gaudy Kitty Quilt

  
Oh, gaudy kitty quilt.  I love you so so much.  I am 99.9% sure that this is my favorite quilt that I've ever made, beating this quilt by only 1/10 of a percentage.



Background - We moved Phoebe into a twin size at the beginning of summer;  hence, she needed a new big girl quilt for her big girl bed.


 
If you learned anything about Phoebe from her Rainbow Kitty Party, you know that this girl has a *bit* of an obsession with kitty cats.  So I decided to take all of my kitty fabric - including the super gaudy novelty prints that had been in my stash for forever - and combine them all in a quilt that any 4 year old, cat-lovin girl would go nuts over.  In turn, the Gaudy Kitty Quilt was born.


 
It took me quite awhile to figure out what kind of layout would be best for this crazy quilt.  I didn't want to cut the fabric pieces too small since a lot of these novelty prints have a larger scale.  Plus, I got into quilting because of all the amazing textile design, and I like to really showcase the prints in my quilts.

   

My good friend Rossie is the one who recommended this layout of equilateral triangles with the prints laid out in rows.  I had just finished working on this poor quilt that was never blogged about, which was also made up entirely of triangles, and the last thing that I wanted to look at was MORE TRIANGLES, but I knew that it would be the way to go.



This was my original fabric pull.  I have some other great cat prints in the stash, but once I started putting the majority of the fabrics together, the quilt's own color palette started developing, so I decided to remove the blues and most of the other darker toned prints.  Yes it was being made with novelty cat fabric - but I wanted to at least try and make the final product pretty!



I didn't have enough kitty fabric to complete the entire top, so I started mixing in other things Phoebe likes - butterflies, bugs, birds, bunnies (apparently anything that starts with B), and some blender floral prints that I thought made the color scheme a bit more interesting.  I'm proud of myself for even cutting into some of my preciously hoarded japanese fairytale prints.



After getting the top pieced, I made the decision to send out the quilt top to a professional long-armer to be quilted.  I've always quilted my own quilts on my machine at home - even some much larger than this, but my friend Brenda put the idea into my head to have a design of cats quilted all over the top - which was pretty much the best idea I'd ever heard in my life.

Luckily I know Kathy though our Modern Quilt Guild who owns Thread Bear Quilting.  Not only is she an amazing quilter, but she was able to quilt this design all over the gaudy kitty quilt.

I wish I would have remembered to get a detail picture of the quilting itself, but take my word that it's amazing.  If you look closely in the third picture in this post, you can make out the quilting the clearest. 

And that brings us to the end of this quilty journey.  Phoebe loves, and I mean LOVES her quilt, which makes this momma so darn happy.  But even if she didn't, that would still be okay - because then I'd get to keep it for myself!

Meow! 

**This quilt is part of the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  Click here to be inspired by hundreds of beautiful quilts!

Still playing catch up

Here's another quilt that I finished over the summer.  It has long been sent off to it's recipient, but the photos have been sitting here for forever, just waiting to be blogged about.

So this was another commissioned project - a wedding gift - and the only information that I was given was that a) the couple's apartment is very modern and mostly white, b) the couple really likes peacocks.



Thankfully, feathers of all sorts seem to be a big trend right now, so it wasn't hard finding a modern peacock print.  I went with a couple of prints from Dear Stella's line, Lanikai, then threw in some coordinating solids.

I stayed true to my usual sewing method and didn't plan a darn thing.  I made some half square triangles, and haphazardly picked up whatever fabric was lying close to me and sewed some wonky corners onto 6" white squares.  Then I threw everything onto the design floor (seriously, I've been quilting for years and STILL haven't made a design wall.  Eesh!) and rearranged until I shouted, "Eureeka!"



I backed it in a giant piece of the Dear Stella peacock fabric, and quilted it with random (of course!) straight lines.



Word on the street is that the couple loved it!  Congratulations, you two!

Flying geese in grey and yellow

Alrighty folks, since summer is winding down and Phoebe will be heading off to preschool in two weeks (!!!Yay!!!), I'm hoping to get up to date and share some projects that have been keeping me busy these past few months...

One of my cousins is having her first baby next month (a girl - yay!), and is planning her nursery around the palette of grey and yellow.  I've always wanted to do a flying geese quilt - plus, my good friend Brenda just told me about this amazing ruler that makes absolutely perfect flying geese blocks - four at a time!  The Quilt in a Day Flying Geese rulers come in a large or a small size, and you have the option to make two different sizes with each ruler as well!  Even better?  I picked mine up at Joann's with a coupon.  This quilt was made with the large ruler and the finished block size is 4" x 8".

The block layout - as well as fabric choices - were completely random.  I'm actually pretty terrible about planning out my quilts in advance.  I like to just move everything around for a couple of hours after all of the blocks are finished.  I quilted it in straight lines that change direction when they hit the middle of the quilt - following the diagonal; and I backed in it one of my favorite folksy flannel prints.  Soft and warm for a fall baby!

My sister was my lovely quilt holder for this photoshoot, and as you can see, she took her job very seriously :)

Thanks, Abby.

And here's my cousin Jess opening the quilt.  I love you Jess, and can't wait to meet your precious little baby!

A quilt for my sister

My sister has been such a great sport in waiting over a year to get her wedding present - especially since she's been bugging me for a quilt since I started sewing forever ago.  It took me months to come up with a design, since I knew it had to be extra special for my favorite person in the whole world.

After watching my friend Anna make Word Play blocks for a bee, I thought that some sort of written message would be perfect for my sister's quilt. 

The text wasn't all that difficult to come up with, since the movie Rent is one of my go-to movies to watch while sewing (pretty much any musical, really).  The front is the first stanza from the song "I'll Cover You", and the back is the main phrase from the refrain.  If you haven't heard the song - listen to it!

My sister is a huge Rent fan, plus I think that the lyrics are great for a wedding quilt.  I'm sure her husband won't appreciate the sentiment nearly as much (my husband basically replied with "gag"), but he'll have to put up with since he's married now! And I'm kind of giddy that the back says "I'll cover you" and it's a quilt, that ya know, you cover yourself with.  Teehee.

Here's a better view of the text - I was getting some crazy shadows in all of the quilting this afternoon, so I took a much more flatly lit photo that shows off the letters better.  

I had such a blast making all 67 of these letters, and they went much more quickly than I thought they would.  The Word Play Quilts book gives a general diagram for piecing all of the letters, but they're sewn together very casually, by simply by joining small, medium, and large background strips and snipping off the extra with scissors.  No measuring!!

 

I think my favorite part of this quilt is the background fabric.  We had these exact sheets on our bed when we were little girls, and I snatched them up from my parent's linen closet a few years back.  I didn't quite have enough to make the entire quilt - the finished size is 60 x 90" - so I'd always keep my eyes open for more of this print when thrifting.  I think it took me 2 flat twin sheets and a couple pillowcases to complete this. 

I love love love this quilt so darn much, and if it wasn't going to my wonderful sister, I would definitely keep it for myself.  She's flying in from Miami tonight (I haven't seen her in six months!), and I can't wait for her to open it.  I'd say that I hope she likes it - but I think I already know the answer.  Love you so much, Abby!

A quilt for ME - over a year in the making

I first posted about this quilt waaay back in February of 2011.  And then again here, and then when I finally finished the quilt top back in April of last year, and one more time when I finally got the darn thing basted while I was nine months pregnant.

I guess since it is the largest quilt I've ever made - a queen size at 90 x 108" - it makes sense that it took me forever to finish it.  Plus, the thought of quilting this beast made me exhausted just thinking about it, so I put it off for a long time.

But once I sat down and got started - it wasn't quite as tough as I had led myself to believe.  I went with my standard, all over loop-de-loop free motion pattern.  This quilt definitely gave me a lot of practice!

I backed it in a whole mess of pieced vintage sheets and favorite fabric remnants.

Aside from being pieced with lots of my favorite fabrics (Nicey Jane!), and sashed with one of my favorite vintage sheets, my favorite part is that our whole family can cuddle up under this giant without anyone's toes poking out the end :)

Scattered Stars quilt

Remember this bundle of fabric?

Well, that led to this sketch...
 

Which led to this quilt.

This quilt has kept me pretty busy.  The construction of the stars went rather quickly, but cutting and piecing all of those little extra pieces of fabric that offsets them from one another took forever!  And since I have yet to construct a design wall, I would lay everything out on the floor, and then the cats would promptly dive bomb into my array of perfectly placed little quadrangles.

Isn't that Flamingo solid just fantastic?

I quilted it by first outlining all of the stars, then throwing in some extra star outlines in the larger areas of negative space.  You can't really tell from the photo - but I went with an orange thread that looks fantastic on the pink.

The back is a Jenean Morrison print from her California Dreamin line.

And the most difficult part of this quilt is yet to come - shipping it off to it's new owner!  It's hard not to fall in love with each completed quilt :)

Penellogram

Gah!  I totally hate it when more than a week goes by in between blog posts.  And it's definitely not for lack of things to blog about.  I've got about a billion posts in my head, but these kids are just sucking the life out of me! 

And it is only being reinforced by my current Instagram obsession, because everyone keeps posting these gorgeous pictures of themselves sewing and working on projects all day long, and it only makes me seethe with jealousy that I can't get more sewing/blogging/thrifting/cleaning/laundry/sleep/alone time/etc. in everyday.  Sigh.  One day when the kids are grown I'll miss these days of endless games of Hi Ho Cherry-O, right?

But I digress....

Here's another baby quilt that I made for a very soon to be born little boy. 

I just love the range of fabrics I chose for this quilt - some are from current lines of fabric, some are from vintage sheets, and I even used some cotton napkins that I picked up at Target awhile back. 

Phoebe kept calling these diamonds when I was sewing this together, but I informed her that they are actually parallelograms.  Henceforth, Phoebe's favorite shape is the "Penellogram".  Obviously, she seems to be doing much better with her little sister :)

This measures about 45" square and is backed in a vintage sheet that seems to match perfectly.  And speaking of vintage sheets, I've recently added quite a bit to the shop.  Stop by and take a look and I'll give you 15% off your order through the end of the month if you use the code PENELLOGRAM!

Postage stamp baby quilt

I'm finally getting around to posting about this little quilt, even though it was finished and given away at the beginning of the month.

Two good friends from college are having a baby and aren't finding out the gender - which usually drives me insane when making quilts - but I decided to base the quilt off of a description of their nursery, which I was told is a beachy theme with blues, aquas, and some hints of orange.

Each of the little squares is 2", which I first strip pieced in threes, then sewed into little nine patches.  Then I sewed four nine patches into larger blocks, then pieced everything together and added the tan border, which reminded me of the sea floor.

I used the same fabric for the backing, which is actually a tablecloth that I picked up on clearance at Target about a year ago.  I free motion quilted it with a loopy pattern that traveled across each of the rows.

I hope this baby knows how special it will be since I cut into some of my precious Heather Ross fabric for this quilt!

Coming up next....

This beautiful bundle was all pulled from my stash except for the Bella solid in Flamingo.  A few more vintage sheets might join the mix, because I really love mixing them with the modern prints.  This stage of choosing and combining fabrics is my favorite in the entire quilting process.  The design for this quilt is all in my head, now I just need to sketch it out and do the math - definitely not my favorite part!

A little less talk

I have determined that if I would like to continue blogging, I'm going to have to start using more pictures and less words.  Because there's no other way I can fit it into my schedule (or lack there of).  This past week I've been dealing with a sick baby who refuses to sleep or be put down, a toddler who demands constant attention, and a husband who won't have a day off work for two weeks.  That has left very little time for creating - let alone blogging about it! 

But I love this little space, and want to keep it going.  So hopefully some pictures here and there will suffice - at least until Phoebe goes off to preschool in the fall :)

So anyways - Commissioned baby quilt.  Girl.

Ten inch blocks with 1/2 inch sashing in Kona medium gray.  Backed in an Alexander Henry print (I think it's called Petals).

Quilted with straight lines in gray thread.  Final size is about 42" square.

Lots more quilts on the horizon - stay tuned!