Patriotic Trifle Repost

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! 

Today I'll be making one of these. Here is my recipe from an old post. :) Great for 4th of July too!

Enjoy and have a fun and safe day! :)

Patriotic Trifle Repost

Blogger's Quilt Festival... Baby Shower Signature Quilt

Here is my entry for the Spring 2011 Blogger's Quilt Festival, so generously organized by Amy over at Amy's Creative Side. Click on the button above to visit her blog and see all the beautiful quilts entered in the festival! :)

This is one of two quilts I have made for my daughter-to-be... due this August. I first mentioned this quilt in this post, but there have been some changes to this quilt since then. :) I decided to use Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush fabric collection in pinks, browns, oranges, and yellows, with a simple checkerboard pattern, alternating with white squares. 

Since my mom wanted to do some "quilty" themed ideas for my shower, I thought it would be cool to do a signature quilt and have the guests at my shower sign or draw a picture in the white squares. This is the quilt before washing and before signatures. I did some free-motion quilting on the colored squares of little flowers, connected in a diagonal pattern. I didn't want to quilt on the white squares, since I thought it would be more difficult for people to write on them if there was too much texture. 

Here's the back of the quilt, a simple pink flannel. A little more difficult to quilt than cotton, but luckily it is a small quilt. :) I love the soft feel of the flannel backing. 

Here are some pics of the quilt in the signature process at my shower. I used colored fabric markers that matched the colors of the quilt. I let the kids at my shower do handprints or fingerprints using fabric paint. 

Close-up. You can see the quilting better in this pic. :)

Here's the entire quilt with signatures. I still have room for more, in case someone didn't get a chance to make it to the shower. ;)

I also did some simple embroidery of my daughter-to-be's name. This was my first time embroidering on a quilt. I think I will have to do this more often! I think it adds a little extra "homemade-ness" to the quilt! :)

I am so glad that we did this at my shower. Now my daughter will have these sweet words to remind her of how much she is loved... even before she's born! :) My only wish is that I could have done something similar for my son at his shower... but I didn't even own a sewing machine back then! LOL! Maybe for a birthday or something... 

Enjoy the Festival!

Blogger's Quilt Festival... Baby Shower Signature Quilt

Baby Girl Blankets

Over the past week, I made 3 baby blankets for my daughter-to-be! I could probably make a hundred of them! But, I think I'm getting a little carried away with blankets/quilts, and should probably move on to something else. ;)

The first blanket is a snuggly blanket, with a simple cotton front using the Party Dress hexagon panel by Mo Bedell and a minky back, using some soft green I found in the remnants section at Joann's. 

I did a simple binding the same as I do for my quilts, using more of the fabric from the collection. 

I decided to try some hand-tying to keep the layers together. I just used embroidery floss in pink and green on the hexagon corners throughout the blanket. 

I also made 2 larger receiving/swaddling blankets using Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks Voile, and Folksy Flannels. They are SOOO soft! I think me and the boys will be fighting baby girl for these! ;) If you are looking for a good receiving blanket pattern, here's the one I used. They are very quick to make!

I hope you are all having a great start to the week! :)

Baby Girl Blankets

Happy Mother's Day!

First, I'd like to say Happy Mother's Day to all the Mamas out there! 

I hope your day is relaxing and wonderful! :)

Here are some things I made for my mom and sister: 

Mother's Day quilted coasters using fabric made from my son's and my nieces' artwork. 

I had the fabric made at Spoonflower.

Handprint tree for my mom. I got the idea here, but did mine a little different. 

Have a lovely day! :)

Happy Mother's Day!

Two Quilts for Baby Girl!

This weekend I finished the binding on one of the quilts I made for my baby girl. Then, last night I finished the binding on the other! Two quilts finished this week! Woo hoo! :) 

Did I ever tell you I LOVE making baby quilts? They are much easier and faster than bigger quilts! Especially when you have a baby belly in front of you! 

Here's the quilt I'm naming "Cup of Sunshine". I used charm packs from the Sunkissed collection by Sweetwater. The colors are so happy... and girly! :) I made a tumbler template using a leftover piece of cardboard. Here's a great tutorial if you're interested in making something similar. 

I did my usual all-over meandering stipple design for the quilting. 

I used more of the fabric from the collection (Picnic Plaid in Pink) for the binding and a simple white-on-white floral fabric that I had in my stash from my mom. I will probably add another tumbler patch on the back and maybe some embroidery. 

Here's my Baby Shower Signature quilt! I used some of the fabrics from Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush collection. I wanted a simple checkerboard pattern so that the white squares could be used for signatures by guests at my baby shower. 

I didn't want to quilt over the white squares, since I thought it might be harder for people to write on them if there was too much texture. So, I did my own design... I'll call it free-hand sloppy daisies... just on the colored squares. 

You can see the quilting design a little better on the back. I opted for a baby pink flannel backing for this quilt. Let me just say this about quilting with a flannel backing... I'm glad it was just a baby quilt. I don't think I will ever do this with a large quilt. I had problems with thread breaking and a needle broke once. A little frustrating, but I got through it. I'm guessing I had problems because flannel is thicker, and a little more stretchy? Anyone else have problems like this? Anyways, it still turned out good. I think it will look much softer after I wash it. :) I'm also thinking of embroidering my daughter's name on the front of the quilt. I'll update with pics of the signatures after the shower!

Two Quilts for Baby Girl!