A finish and a start!

I've been trying to complete the baby quilt for my cousin April's first grandbaby, and last night (well....3:30 this morning!) I finally finished it!  YAY!


And we even had a sunny day for photos......woohoo!

I'm just thrilled with how it turned out!  It is so close to the pic that April had said "I want THAT quilt," so I think she'll be really pleased.  The quilting was done in just slightly irregular lines all the way across.....but I'll tell ya......straight lines are the devil!  I can so quickly do a swirl with feathers hanging off of it.....but ask me to quilt a straight line, and OY, things slow down to a crawl!  It's just not my first choice of a quilting pattern.....but I think it really works on this quilt.


And yeah, it's an oversized baby quilt, about 50x65......plenty big to have it for the big-boy bed later!


And now for the start that I mentioned in the post title.


A little while ago, Barb from Fun with Barb blog posted that she (and a few of her friends) were going to make a Jubilee quilt to commemorate them turning 50 this year!  So, along with Lori from Humble quilts, I'm joining in on the fun!  Are you turning 50 this year?  Want to join in!?!  Come on!  It'll be great to have a quilt that you made just for you....just what you really like....so you can look at it and say, "That's all about me....me me me....YAY, me at 50!"  lol


So I was trying to decide what quilt to make for it.....cuz there are hundreds that I want to make, and then it hit me!  You know my favorite color is orange, so it hit me that those orange creamsicle ice cream bars were always called 50/50 bars......so, of course, I need to make a two-color quilt with orange and white!  Gotta do it!  My own 50/50 for my 50th!  Yay!


And I was wanting to make a certain quilt from the Red & White show from the second I saw it, so that's going to be the one I'll do!

I'm so excited!  Can't wait to get started!


And I had no idea that 'Jubilee' had a biblical reference......but Lori found this.....

Leviticus 25:10
Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you.

I like that a lot!

Let's rejoice that we are turning 50 this year!!!!


regan

Need just one more post!

So, if you know me at all.....you know I love prime numbers!  Why.....I don't know!  I just do!  So as I looked on my postings list, I realized I was at 46 for the year!  Eeegads!  I can't have that!  So.....here's just one more to put me at 47......yep, a prime!  Life is good!  :o)

My cousin April is going to be a 1st time grandma (but she'll NEVER let anyone call her that!  HA!).....and she asked me if I would make the little peanut a baby quilt.  She had looked at the few I still had left from my stash, and they were just too girly......the little peanut is a boy.  Turns out, her DIL has 'designed' the baby's room to be teal, grey and white.  It is very sophisicated, modern and stylish......NO BUNNIES OR FLOWERS!  lol

I emailed April dozens of pics of quilts to help her decide on a pattern or style.....she's not a quilter, so I figured this would be something for her to look at and feel she was making some of the decision.  And she fell in love with a particular quilt......she wanted THAT quilt!  I told her it would probably be impossible to get the same fabrics, but I would duplicate the general mood of it.

So, I started with my stash.....and of course, I have 1 teal fabric!  It's just not my color of choice!  So I headed to a few fabric shops, and picked up a few more teals.  I was loving the fabrics together, but they just weren't matching the mood of the picture quilt.  So yesterday......I drove the hour and 45 minutes to Keepsake Quilting in NH.  Woohoo......I hit the mother lode!  I picked up 6 new pieces, and together with 3 of the others that I had......it's perfect!  I think it captures the mood perfectly.

Here is a pic of the fabrics.....of course, this was taken at night with the fluorescent lighting, so where it is brown is actually a nice grey.....do you think the combo has style, sophistication, and a modern look?

The pattern of the quilt is a simple chunky coins in strips......so the biggest piece will be about 6" square, and down to 2x6"......with pure white separating the strips.  Bound in black.

I will be cutting and piecing over the weekend.  I'm hoping to get this quilted and in the mail before the middle of January.  The baby is due in early March, so I don't want April in a panic.  It's an easy pattern, so I should be able to whip it up fairly fast.

I guess the hardest part......and always for me......is picking the fabrics!  Why is that?

I guess that's why I love scrappy quilts......toss everything together, and it looks great!  But tell me to pic 6 prints that go together......OY!  I'm stumped!

As I've been reading blogs today.....so many have mentioned what their goals for 2012 will be.....like resolutions, but I like the word 'goal' better.  So my goal for 2012 is to get this place organized.....my sewing room is.....why isn't the rest of the house!?!  And it's been making me a little crazy lately, too, so I guess it's time!  We'll be having another yard sale this summer (had one 2 summers ago, and it was GREAT!), so I think I will be putting stuff aside for that again!  I'm pretty excited about this, cuz there is nothing I like about clutter, and yet, I seem to be surrounded by it!  Yuk!

It always worries my husband when I get in this kind of mood......he's so afraid he won't have anything left when I'm done!  HA!

Hope you all have a safe and Happy New Year!

regan

While I was organizing.....

It's amazing what you come across when you start to really organize!

I decided I wanted ALL of my quilting fabric in my sewing room.  I had all my fat quarter tubs, and all of my strip and scrap tubs in there, but all of my more-than-one-yard pieces were still on the third floor.  And that made it really hard to see what I had when trying to pull fabrics for a quilt.  So, about 400 trips back and forth, up and down the stairs with armloads of fabric.....and it was all together!

I pulled the two big bookcases down to my room, and refolded everything, and put it back on the shelves, all color coordinated!  Yikes!  It looks fabulous!  And I can see EVERYTHING!

Funny how you don't think you like blue very much, but then you look at your stash.....and well.....3 stacks of blue!  Sheesh!  Who knew!?!

So, as I'm pulling all this fabric out of the 3rd floor room.....I came across 3 projects that I had totally lost track of!  And I'm so glad I found them, because one of them is nearly done!

This baby quilt, shown on a queen bed, is nearly done with the hand quilting!  It's all hand pieced, as well.  And I'm keeping this one for a wall hanging when it's finished, because there is no way any baby is going to spit up on this!  lol

This Ohio Star was started when I lived in Massachusetts, about 13 years ago!  It has about 25 of the 63 stars hand quilted (machine pieced).  This was my first try at hand quilting, and someone should have told me that you shouldn't start on such a damned big quilt!  Sheesh!  I was so sick of black and red, I just couldn't look at it anymore, much less work on it!  I do like it, but it's going to be a slow process of finishing it.  We'll see what happens!

This Drunkard's Path is near and dear to my heart, because this was the one I mentioned a few blogs back, that my dear friend Rita helped with a little hand piecing on it.  It's got a little bit of her in it, so I will never part with it!  It had about 3 hours of hand quilting on it at one time, but I took that out a few years ago, because I would much rather machine quilt it, and get it on a bed!  It's a monster size....oversized queen!  There's just no way I would ever get the hand quilting done!

Isn't it fun to find things that you had totally lost track of!?!  There's a whole lot of memories connected to these 3 quilts, as well.  I loved finding them.....now I just need to get busy on them!  lol

Hope you're having a wonderful day!

regan