Pink Delight II

Date:  April 2013

Reason:  I bought a jelly roll at Walmart that easily made two baby quilts.  This one is slightly larger that her sister because I added the pink plaid border.

Thoughts:  A friend bought this for her daughter.

Tipsy Topsy

Date:  July 2012

Reason:  I needed a test quilt for new fill I am trying out.  A baby-sized quilt seemed the way to go.  Also, I saw Leah Day's modern quilt technique and thought it would be fun to put a "twist" on these traditional 4-patches (haha).

Special Fabrics:  Five of the blocks are from dozens and dozens that my grandmother has given me over the years.

Lessons Learned:  Finally, I think it's been established WHY I had such wavy edges.  Leah cautioned against putting too much strain on the edges and I've realized that I practically play tug-of-war to bind my quilts because I'm so close to done I can taste it.  When you add the fact that two of my waviest quilts had double machine sewn bindings, it's no wonder they looked rippled.

Tipsy Topsy looks much better.  Thanks so much, Leah!

Thoughts:  Although I didn't do the fabulous quilting method that Leah is teaching for this quilt, I definitely want to try it out because it looks amazing.

I'm already getting bored of the straight stipple so I need to think about how I can incorporate an all over quilt method to enhance the blocks, not just stitch over them randomly.

Also, I think a larger stipple would have looked better on this quilt.

Pink Baby

Date:  June 2012

Size:  30 x 30

Reason:  I took some pretty pinks from the blocks my grandma gave me because I knew they would make a cute baby quilt.

Fabrics:  Scraps from my stash, my grandma's blocks and a baby blanket of my daughter's.

Lessons:  My machine quilting is getting better!  Although I'm not doing Leah Day's tutorials per se, most of my quilting information comes from her blog:  http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com.  She has oodles of videos.  My opinion of machine quilting went from "pshh, not happening" when I saw her first video to "I could try it once" to "wheeeeee" after my first quilt.

On the half square triangle centre, I did a loopy style of stippling to hopefully emulate the flight of the butterflies that are appliqued in the centre.

Thoughts:  I still need to learn what I am doing wrong or how to fix my wavy edges.  Is it a quilting issue?  Am I a bad measurer?  Do I need to square my quilts better?  Probably it's all of the above.

I used a baby blanket we no longer needed.  I kept the 'satin' binding from the blanket to use on the quilt.

I traded this to a co-worker for some NuCerity.