Tea Time Quilt

I know I said I'd post about the Dr. Seusse quilt I made, but it has not reached its home yet, I will have to wait a bit longer. In the meantime-Tea Time!

Last week I was on Spring Break. And while I did have some student papers to grade, and house guests, I also wanted to do some sewing. I had several UFOs to choose from, as well as designs for a couple of new quilts, and some fundraiser quilts to make.
So, of course, I ended up making none of the above.
Instead I made this. I call it "Tea Time Quilt":

It is made in the "attic Windows" pattern which I have used many times before. It is an extremely versatile pattern as anything can be used for the "windows, while the frames may be done in left overs from other projects, usually. And the trick to the three dimensional effect is in the placement of the light and dark colors of the frames. Here's a close up:

I fell in love with the tea pot fabric at the store, and I bought a yard of it even though I didn't have a project planned for it. When I saw it again on my shelves last week, the tea pots made me think of lace doilies. I then found the cream and tan fabrics to go with it, and the lacy black and white. As I only had small amounts of the cream, tan and "lace" fabrics, I decided to make the Attic Windows pattern.
Then I found the black and white fabric, which, I think I had bought as backing for a different quilt, and decided to use it as the border. Which meant I needed a different fabric for the backing. Luckily I found a yard and half of this:

I put the whole thing together and used left over strips of the border fabric as the binding. I have been using fabric as binding more and more lately, as I use mostly straight-up 90 degree angles (which are much easier than acute angles, for example).

The whole thing came out to a lap-quilt size, and up up up it goes on etsy tomorrow.
And now onto the other projects....

Two new Baby Quilts

A few years ago I made a quilt for my friend Ky, in anticipation of the birth of her first child, a son. They’ve used it and loved it since he was born and now I got a chance to make her family another baby quilt; this time for her daughter. As Ky was busy changing the nursery from blue to pink, I was trying to come up with a girl’s quilt that wasn’t too girly.

I was determined to use fabric from my “stash” and I’m not really a pink kind of person, which means I did not have any pinks…so I was trying to find something that’s feminine and fun, without pink. I realized I had quite a bit of red, in different shades, and so decided on a rose- and-cream kind of quilt, using scrappy reds on an off white background.

Here’s what I made:

The pattern is called “stepping stones” or “garden stones” depending on where you look, and it’s fun and easy to make.

Here it is with the binding:


The next challenge was the backing. I always like to make the backing a totally different type of color and style so the recipient will, in effect, have two quilts. As the front is fairly monochromatic, I wanted the back to be colorful, but as it is for a baby, I looked for something fun and child-friendly.
And here was an obstacle. When my kids were little I had tons and tons of child-themed fabrics. But now that the girls are both teenagers, I could not find anything. I dug deeper.

I found scraps of children’s fabrics, but nothing large enough to use for a backing, and not enough to make a new patchwork piece to use as a backing.

Finally, I looked in my UFO cupboard. And there I found this:

I must have bought it years ago for a project I was planning, but that project never came to fruition and, honestly, I don’t even remember what it was. So I used the fabric for this new project.

Kayden’s quilt was done and ready for the baby shower we were organizing for Ky and then, a couple of weeks before the shower, I learned that another colleague was joining the party, and she has a new baby, who would also be attending.

Time for a new quilt!

This one had to be quick, and I decided on strips. I had several different shades of Batik fabric left over from a different project and some left over white fabric (white on white technically). I made her this:

But again, I was stuck on the backing. Seeing as how I was almost foiled by the backing of Kayden’s quilt, I broke down and went to the fabric store (woe is me!) to get backing fabric for Leah’s quilt. I found this:

I also used this fabric as the binding and quilted the blanket with green thread (which you can see in the close up picture):



It actually works to tie the two quilts together, which I didn’t think of until they were both done…

We had the shower, and it was festive, and chatty (and the cake was delicious). And both mamas liked the quilts

Next up,  a post about a Dr. Seussian quilt.