Emilie's quilt is complete!

I've been calling this "Pink/Brown Baby Quilt" or "Emilie's Pink/Brown Baby Quilt", but those are really boring names. So I'm open to any suggestions on what to officially call this! I finished hand sewing the binding last week, just in time to take it to UFO club at Millhouse and put my name in the jar for finished projects. The drawing for a gift certificate is in December and I've been able to get my name in it quite a few times, so keep your fingers crossed that I win.

On Saturday I visited Kim and Peter and gave Ella and Emilie their quilts. As promised, here are pictures of the girls with their new quilts:

Cutie Pie Emilie


She even wore jammies that matched the quilt (notice the flower on the jammies looks similar to the quilting??!!)



Sweet Pea Ella



If you need proof that her favorite colors are green and pink, take a look at her bedroom walls!

I had all kinds of great pictures on my camera (more of Ella and Emilie, Jack and Owen at the children's museum last week, my knitting progress), but somehow I accidentally erased the entire memory card in my camera. =( I was goofing around with my camera while trying to figure out how to take a picture of a black cat without washing out/overexposing everything. Kim's cat Loomy is mostly black and I was determined to get a picture of him. The good news is that I figured it out. There is a setting for adjusting the exposure and one for choosing the lighting (daylight/fluorescent/tungsten, etc.). Between those and choosing the speed manually, I got some good pictures. Instead of resetting each option, I thought I could do a "reset all" step. Apparently reset all includes resetting your memory card. Grrrr. That was a life lesson. I re-took some pictures of Loomy and he might guest star on a Caturday in the future.

I've finished up/made progress on lots of my projects lately and will try to post about them separately. Unfortunately my Star BOM has fallen behind. I have 2 of those to catch up on and really, really, really hope to get to them this week.

So Sew Busy!

I've had a million gazillion things going on this week that I didn't manage to find time to post as they were happening, so I'll do a re-cap of the last week (or so).

Last Tuesday was my monthly guild meeting. I'm chairing the community service project this year and I made a presentation about it. I'll post all about it another time.

Last Thursday I took pictures of the quilts that hung in the Mad City Quilt Guild's booth at Quilt Expo last month. The pictures are posted on our website. It was an all day affair, between photographing, cropping/resizing and then uploading them.

Friday/Saturday/Sunday: work, work, work.

Monday- recuperate and continue with the blocks for Funky Boxes. I'm almost done with the blocks!!! Hurrah! I have all but 8 done and tonight I ripped all the paper off, so I can get to piecing the blocks together soon.

Tuesday I helped a little with Project Linus' Make a Blanket Day. The focus for the day was to make fleece throws and NICU flannel blankets. The group managed to make nearly 100 blankets that day! Amazing!

Wednesday was the monthly meeting of the UFO Club at Millhouse Quilts in Waunakee. I didn't have anything to register (nothing completed, nothing new), but took some of the funky boxes along and started tearing the paper off of them. Afterwards, I did a little shopping. For the first time ever, their sale room was open while I was there. It had lots of tempting things. My favorite was a shelf full of 'scrap packages'. When a bolt is done and there isn't a usable amount to sell as yardage, they save the scraps and sell them discounted. The top part of the picture is the package and the second is what was inside. Lots of great stuff! And I was able to use some of the bits in my funky boxes. The last picture is some cool fabric that I got at 30% off. It's very yummy.

Thursday: My day to volunteer at the children's hospital. It was a pretty quiet session. That's good for the kids because they aren't in the hospital, but not as much fun for the volunteers.

Non-quilty: Thursday was my final tennis match for the fall season and I'm very happy to report that I ended the season with a win!!! Just like George Costanza says, "End on a high note."

Friday/Saturday: I headed to my parent's house to use my mom's longarm and get some tops quilted. My time was limited. I managed to quilt two small baby/kid sized quilts. First up was my flip-flops quilt that I'm giving to my friend's daughter Ella. She just turned 4 a few months ago. I kept the quilting simple -- loop-de-loo's and the top finished quick.

Next up was the pink and brown baby quilt that I made for Ella's new sister, Emilie. I wanted to quick and simple quilting on this one, too, but it didn't go nearly as smooth as the flip-flops. =/

Normally, I practice and refine my design on muslin before I start the real deal. Because I thought this was a simple pattern, I went straight for the actual quilting. Yeah, I should have taken the time to load the muslin!! After 4 blocks, I realized that I hated my thread choice (dark brown) and design. It took forever to rip that area out. Even after I switched thread, I still wasn't totally happy with my second choice. I ended up using a pink variegated thread, but would rather have used a plain light pink. Overall, the quilt looks nice, but it made me realize how rusty my longarm skills got over the summer. I'll post final pictures of the quilts once I get the binding done.

Last, but not least, today was Jessica's baby shower! My friends Kimberly and Jean hosted and the theme was retro/50's era. Guests were encouraged to wear pearls and twinsets. I had fun with it and wore a scarf over my hair and under my chin when I arrived. I had an old apron for when I was in the kitchen and brought cucumber sandwiches and a dish of mixed nuts. If only I had some cat-eye glasses!! Drat. Of course for a present I'm giving her a baby quilt. For today, I gave her a shoe box full of the Funky Box blocks.

(L-R) Jean, Kimberly displaying a jello mold, Jessica and me

Disappearing Nine-Patch

I'm back in the swing of things sewing-wise. After goofing around with the string blocks, crumbs and paper-pieced little girls, I settled down to the most important project at hand. A baby quilt for a my friend's baby that's close to 4 months old. I started this in January, with plenty of time to finish it prior to her due date. I even picked a simple pattern that I could "whip together quickly" (Disappearing Nine-Patch). Well, other projects took precedence and then summer got underway and the poor quilt has been neglected.



This week I finished enough blocks to make it 50 x 60 inches. I'm not sure if I'm going to put a border on it. I'll definitely add sashing to the 2 edges (top and right in this picture), so it looks balanced. I like the simplicity of the pattern without borders and it's definitely big enough, but I worry that it will be too stretchy with all of those seams on the sides. Maybe I'll do a narrow (1"-2") light pink? just to stabilize it.