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I finished up this 16 patch baby quilt over the weekend. I have been wanting to make one ever since I saw this quilt , and I loved the little 2 inch squares in my scrappy trip quilt that this one got moved to the top of the list.  The blocks came together quickly (I used this tutorial as a guide) and they were fun to make. I have been wanting to try orange peel quilting and this seemed like a good time to try it since it is a grid of 2" (finished) squares.  I think this is my new favorite way to quilt.  It was a little bit rough at first (even after practicing quite a bit) but by the end things were going pretty well. The quilting is far from perfect, but it is definitely something I will do again.  The quilt is currently in the washer and I think that the quilting is going to give it great texture once it has been through the dryer. The quilt is backed with this Riley Blake grey-on-grey chevron, the quilting showed up much better on the less-busy back.   I will be sending this

For our DGS Wish circle this month, Lynn asked us to make green and blue blocks with a gray background. These were fun and fast to put together.  I didn't realize until I was done that everyone else was using the same color of gray for the entire background so I hope Lynn doesn't mind that I raided my scraps and came up with lots of different grays! I spent the last couple days putting together a quilt top for a friend's newborn who is in the hospital for the next few weeks.  I was helping my friend learn to make her first quilt when they moved to Boston last year, so I wanted to do something when I heard the story. I finished up the quilt top last night and then basted it today during nap time.  I think that Adrianne and I must be on the same page because I added 16 patch to my quilts-I-want-to-make list after finish my the scrappy trip along .  I am thinking about trying orange peel quilting on this one.  Would that be ok for a baby boy quilt? My friend and fellow Wish-

It has been a good week.  I am loving working on my Maple Leaf Rag quilt and I made some good progress on that project in addition to finishing two pillows for the Intrepid Thread Scrap Challenge.  Sadly, this project is going to have to go on hold for a little bit because I have 3 baby quilts to make.  Apparently everyone is having babies!  One is for my sister, one that another sister asked me to make for her best friend, and one for a friend whose little newborn is in the hospital for at least a couple months with a severe infection. I am further on this quilt than I thought, so I only have two and a half more rows yet.  Other projects that I need to get going: 3 baby quilts I volunteered to make a tote bag for a youth auction at church, so I am planning on making one of these .  I have about a month to finish that one up. I really want to make my daughter's Easter dress this year, but I didn't realize how early Easter is so it may not happen.  A couple months ago I bought

I was super excited to be picked to participate in Rachel's Intrepid Thread Scrap Challenge .  The fabrics involved in the challenge are GORGEOUS, but one thing that I liked about participating is that they aren't colors that I normally use (though I don't know why because I loved working with them!). When I commented on Rachel's blog to participate, I said that I would like to make some extra cushions for our floor.  We live in a cozy little two bedroom townhouse and we could never really have too many pillows for extra seating. I started out by making this one using some black yarn-dyed essex linen to make stitch and flip triangles.  It fits a 24" pillow form.  When I finished this one up, I realized that there was plenty of fabric left to make a second pillow. For this one I used half rectangle triangles using this tutorial . I quilted it by echoing the zig zag with lines 1 inch apart and then added a few zig zags of hand quilting in orange perle cotton.  It fit

This week I made some good progress on my Maple Leaf Rag quilt.  By Friday I had finished all of the kite-shaped pieces, which went much faster than I had anticipated.  Here are all 128 of them.  Actually 130 because I made a couple of extra by accident. While this project is definitely shrinking my enormous scrap collection, I still have way too many scraps.  I started out by going through all of my scraps and picking out some of the smaller scraps of each color and putting them in a bag.  When I started out, this bag was completely full of fabric.  When I finished  it looked like this. It turns out that the next step is much more time consuming, which to be honest is kind of nice.  I am having a lot of fun working with old fabrics that I haven't used in a while and I am thoroughly enjoying the process. I also received my fabrics to participate in the Intrepid Thread Scrap Challenge , so I think I will get started on that tonight.  Does anyone know what the fabric tied around the

Head over to the Moda Bake Shop to check my tutorial for this improv Valentine quilt.

By finishing up my x and + quilt this week, I have now completed all of my works in progress!  So of course I had to start a new one.  I have been planning to make the Maple Leaf Rag pattern from Material Obsession 2 , and this seems like the perfect time to get started because my scrap bins are overflowing all over the place. I am starting by making all of the crazy-pieced kite shapes and so far I have made 35/128.  This quilt is going to be a long WIP so I have a ways to go :)  I am hoping to have all of the kite pieces made by this time next week and hopefully I will be able to notice my scrap bins shrinking!

After enjoying January's block so much, I was excited to get started on February's Lucky Star BOM .  I actually thought this block was easier and faster than last month's, or maybe I am just used to the idea of making a tiny block since I made the 6.5" version again. If you are going to make the block, I will warn you that the fabric it recommends cutting for steps 4 and 6 was WAY more than I needed and could have been a few inches smaller.  But of course too much is always better than too little :) My plan for my fabric choices each month is to use one Flea Market Fancy print and match it with some coordinating prints.  Hopefully that way the blocks will be somewhat cohesive without being too matchy.

I have been wanting to get started on a Triple Zip Pouch , but I was feeling a little confused about which fabrics I wanted to use.  Then last week I stopped into Sew Modern and realized that this was the perfect excuse to buy some of this Olive and Ostrich fabric .   I lined it with this purple Lizzy House print.  Can you tell purple is my favorite color? I thought the instructions were easy to follow and the pouch came together in a little over an hour.  My only problem was the end of the zipper there on the top right where it is kind of smushed down, but that was my own fault.  This is a very useful pouch for me since I carry several different creams and medications to deal with my daughter's eczema and food allergies.   After I took these photos my daughter picked up the pouch and said, "Thanks Mom!" and walked away with it, so I guess I'm going to have to make another one for myself :)

I'm back.  I have spent the last couple weeks recovering the flu, helping my family recover from the flu, and celebrating my birthday, so I'm sorry I have been neglecting the blog!  I do have a quilt to share and it is one that I LOVED working on. Last year I started making a few of these blocks  with some It's a Hoot charm packs and some Just Wing it scraps.  I abandoned the blocks because I knew I didn't have enough fabrics to finish the quilt.  I am so glad I waited.  A few weeks ago I snatched up an Oh Deer! layer cake on sale and I knew that I had to pick up those old blocks and finish up the quilt using three Momo collections. I just love Momo's fabrics.  They are so beautiful and bright and vibrant and I love seeing these three collections together.   I had some more Moda Snuggles sitting around and it seemed like a perfect backing for this quilt. I quilted it with straight-ish lines about a half inch apart diagonally across the quilt.   I wanted to use somet