Forest Quilt Progress

Slight change to the plan for the forest quilt: I'm going to make a lovey first, with a coordinating quilt to come later. The lovey will be roughly a 24" square, with 2 of the four-part blocks and two bigger, cream blocks. My original intent for the quilt project was for it to be something that my son could snuggle. I realized a twin-size bed quilt probably would not meet that intent. So lovey first, and hopefully a similar bed quilt will aid in the transition to a big boy bed when he is ready for that.

The progress on the lovey is actually coming along pretty well, as small as it is. I have finished the four-part blocks. Yay!

The rest of the fabrics for the top layer are washed and ready to be cut. Sewing together the blocks and strips to finish the top will go incredibly quickly, and I'm hoping to get some time to get that done this weekend.

I also got a chance to play around with some mistake bits, trying to figure out what I want to do with the quilting. My only experience with machine quilting to date was straight lines on a shopping cart cover for G. So I have a lot of learning to do in that department. I played around with the leaf fabric with a contrast thread for visibility. I tried tracing the design, and just some general filler-type motifs that I've seen on other quilts. I wasn't impressed with any of these. On the corduroy, I knew I wanted to stay away from quilting across the plush lines of the corduroy, so tried vertical stripes and loved them. My current thought is to do (evenly-spaced) vertical stripes on the corduroy and horizontal stripes on the leaf fabric.

For the large cream blocks, I had the idea from the very beginning to quilt in some woodsy animals and/or motifs. I came across Lone Minkkinen's Quilting Designs from Nature in the recent American Quilter's Society catalog and was intrigued. I picked up a copy on Amazon (for less than the AQS member price) and am very excited about the designs it offers.

Now I just need to get some time when I am not exhausted and maybe I can start to make some more progress!

Forest Quilt Planning

Back when I was pregnant with my first, I found myself in a fabric store in Breckenridge in search of something fabulous to remember the trip by. I stumbled across a cream and green leaf motif fabric, and bought a yard and a half, thinking I might make a crib sheet out of it.

Jump forward almost two years. I'm dreaming up a quilt for that same baby, whose room is done up in a forest motif, with a tree painted on the wall even. I was gravitating towards green in his quilt, and one day pulled out all of the quilt-suitable green fabrics from my stash. I came across an awesome green cotton corduroy that I had picked up from the remnants at Denver fabrics. Add to that a green leafy quilting remnant I had picked up at Joann's a few days before, and I was starting to salivate!

Leftmost is the Breck fabric

Now I needed a quilt design! I knew I wanted to keep it simple, and was craving something with some empty space after my last, very busy quilt. In my internet wanderings, I came across a "simple four patch" pattern. This was it! After starting to play around with cutting fabric last night, I got on my computer and made a mock up of what the quilt will look like, to figure out dimensions, counts of squares, etc.

With this arrangement and 8 inch square big blocks, I will need a 6-8 inch border for a twin size quilt. I haven't yet figured out what I want that to look like, but I have plenty of time!

My intent is to strip piece the four-square blocks. Last night, I was cutting 4 1/2" squares out of my fabric. Doh! Old habits die hard.

Pirate Costume Stall: Laundry!

I have been so out of the loop with sewing that I got into the long weekend, ready to make some progress with sewing, and realized that I hadn't yet washed my fabrics. Gah! I can't wash them together and I can't wash them completely alone, so they're waiting on my lazy butt getting around to doing laundry in general this weekend. Time to get to it so I have some weekend left to get some sewing done!