One more demin quilt

 Our dear friends, for whom the "Glewwe Quilt" is a rite of passage when each of their children moves from their crib to a big boy/girl bed, announced to us that they were expecting their 8th by having number 7 record a video saying they needed another Glewwe Quilt!

So, we delightedly began sewing, with the fun addition of two pairs of the new baby's dad's jeans to incorporate into the mix. As a summer baby, we picked a bright, cheery, strawberry print for the fleece backing. And a funny detail: while we always make these quilts 10 squares wide by 14 squares long, we accidentally laid this one out 10x15, so hers is a little bigger than her siblings! I didn't notice until I was tying the quilt and realized that the corners on one side weren't coming out the way they always do (with a tie in each corner when I do every other. Ha! Jokes on me!)

Gloria, Rinnah, and Evania all helped me a bit on this one, both laying out and sewing, and Evania trimmed all the yarn ties for me at the end.

Annaseya's quilt

 Another reason to make a denim baby quilt! These are so fun to make - I love repurposing old denim, and they come together so nicely and are a great balance of rugged and snuggly.

Here's Ebenezer enjoying the batting! I always buy a full roll because I know I'll use it up eventually!

This one is for our niece's fourth child.

Sweet peachy foxes on the back side. Also, notice the fun stitching on the pocket under the fold, and the cute blue corduroy OshKosh overalls!

Gloria's denim quilt

 It's a great starter project - the materials are mostly free, and it's a great size to start with.

(Can't remember when this one was done.)

Seraphina's quilt

 Another denim quilt! Although we'd planned to do two others this Christmas as well, but we don't have enough denim squares!!!

 We got to use a few olive green squares that we had that tied in really nicely with...

...the adorable mouse and strawberry print on the back!

A new baby in the family is always a good reason to make a quilt. :)

Alex's quilt

 So, a week before Christmas, Matt says to me, "We should make a bed size quilt for Alex*!" 

*Alex is Owen's friend who's been living with us since August.

So, why not - many hands makes light work, right? So Matt and I laid it out that night with help from Rinnah and Leah (the benefit of putting in hours over the years here and there getting squares precut!) and the next day, Evania, Gloria, Rinnah and I started sewing. A few minutes here and there all week long, and we got the top done, laid it all out with Leah and Rinnah helping again one evening, and got half of it tied. Matt got the rest tied the next morning (Christmas Eve), while I worked on preparing our fancy dinner for the evening. Alex came up at one point that morning and asked if we had a big blanket that he could use because although he has three, they're all throw size so none of them cover his whole body. I said, "Sure!" and went upstairs and grabbed the first quilt I made for him to use. We were all laughing as he went back down to his room...even Owen who was also in on the secret, and made it up later that afternoon to help with sewing on the binding so it would be ready to give to Alex that evening!!

We think he liked it. :)

One interesting tidbit is that we used up a stack of 34 larger size squares that I think were left over from the quilt that I made for Matt back when we were dating! They're a larger size than our current 4.5" square cut size, so they have languished unused for years. Now they're gone. :) Yay!!

Evania's denim and khaki quilt

Evania made this one all by herself, with a fun strip of two different reds to give it almost a flag-like look. She chose a fleece with stars for the back, and we creatively pieced in where it was not quite big enough at one corner - you can hardly see it!

 

J's quilt

 This is the most recent baby quilt we've made with squares cut from old jeans.

We were a little playful with the label and decided to have the frog hold onto it for us!!

We alternated red and green ties for this quilt, and included just a few red corduroy squares from a favorite pair of Eben's pants that disintegrated.

Avi's quilt

Almost forgot to post this one, because we finished it a long time before delivering it, and I didn't want my friend to randomly come across it before her daughter received it!

Here is another in the series of denim quilts for babies that we know and love. :) Nothing particularly out of the ordinary in Avi's quilt, besides some fun colors thrown into the mix! Gloria picked out the sweet deer patterned fleece for the backing and that set the tone for the accent colors in the denim.

Owen's memory quilt

 This was a fun surprise present for Owen for Christmas! It's all of his old soccer shirts (well, most of them), and a variety of other significant pieces of his childhood, all tied together with a cotton soccer print and backed with an amazingly soft red fabric, that was a pain to work with, but well worth it for how much he loves it!

Castellan's quilt

Happy first birthday! Since it happened during the COVID-19 quarantine, we didn't get to go to his birthday party, but a whole van full of the kids drove out with Matt to deliver the denim quilt that was a joint effort.

Made all with stuff we had already on hand (nice to have a stash in the basement!) we put this one together with a fun fleece with cars on it and the girls helped me pick the color of yarn to tie it with - actually three colors! Something we haven't done before on one of these!

Leah and Rinnah helped sew the quilt top (actually one we had done up ahead of time about a year ago, maybe?), then Rinnah, Evania and I machine stitched the binding. Gloria, who I don't yet let use the machine, was the cutter while I strung the yarn through, and Evania helped trim the yarn after I tied it. Ebenezer just tested it out. ;)

Narwhal quilt

This is another one of Leah's, made after the same pattern Matt and I have done for the denim baby quilts. She made a neat pattern alternating khaki pants with denim, and used some really sweet squares from a pair of baby overalls with little pink hearts on them. The squares were all precut (as we have a box of hundreds of them that we keep stockpiled), but she did all of the work on her own.

The narwhal fabric she found is simply adorable, and we loved how it tied in the exact pink and greenish-blue that is on the special embroidered denim.

She chose to tie the quilt in the middle of the light squares instead of at the corners as Matt and I usually do - another touch that makes it more "hers."

Caleb's quilt

My helper - Krassimir was thrilled when I let him hold the finished quilt after having to tell him not to touch it while I was finishing the pin-infested border.

Of all of our college friends that we made "first baby" quilts for, one of those couples made it clear how much they loved the quilt, so when they had their second child, we made her one, too.

We never guessed going into it that they would have seven children! And it's become kind of a thing for us to make a "Glewwe Quilt" for each one of their new babies, and their tradition is that the child gets to have their Glewwe quilt when they're old enough to graduate from their crib to a big-kid bed. And this is a good thing, because it means we have enough time to actually get the quilt done between nine months of pregnancy and a good year plus after birth before it needs to be ready. ;) So this poor, simple quilt has been quite a while in the making, but we're just a little past Caleb's first birthday, so once again, we'll have it to them in time for his rite of passage!

Another basic 10x14 grid of 4" pre-cut denim squares, hand tied with yarn, polyester batting and fleece backing.

Elia's Quilt

Nothing out of the ordinary - just another one in our collection of denim baby quilts for the Engesser family! Leah helped me pick out the fleece backing for this one, and also helped with the layout and sewing.

Like the rest of the denim quilts, this one is a 10x14 grid of 4" (finish size) denim squares, mostly from worn pants, but a few from other items. The batting is 3 oz polyester (because I couldn't find 4 oz), and the quilt is hand-tied.

Unassigned denim quilt - for Evie!!

This denim quilt is one that we made without any one assigned to it, and still it sits. I think we'd considered giving it to friends of ours if they had a boy, but they had a girl instead. A few interesting parts of this one - we had started it back when we still serged the quilts and had the serging facing out. I *think* this was actually the project where the serger quit working the way we wanted it to, so the project went on hold.

Years later (and even that is a guess!), hating to see a half-finished project, we decided to abandon the full serging and just find a way to use the pieces that were already serged without any others. The fleece for the back of the quilt was an impulse purchase - it is still one of the most beautiful patterns I've ever seen. Amazing colors - classic, yet with the punch of green and orange to make it interesting, and beautifully shapes and patterns. It's perfect.

So who knows who this quilt will belong to. (I have an inkling, because as I'm posting this realtime 5/30/16 I just found out about friends of ours who are expecting their first!!!) We'll see how that all works out. ;) ~*~ Sure enough - this one ended up going to Nathan and Anne's darling baby girl!! ~*~

Machine sewn, hand tied, poly batting.

Ruthie's quilt

Ruthie Joy's quilt uses some of the leftover batik canvas that I used to make something for Owen when he was first born. Finding a good match for the back led to these funky owls. ;)

Machine sewn, hand tied, poly batting, 10x14 grid of 4" denim (and batik canvas!) squares.

Lydia's quilt

Another denim quilt for a dear friend. These are so much fun to make because they go together relatively quickly (since we keep the squares ready-cut), and each one has so much personality.

This one is, like usual, a 10x14 grid of 4" finished size squares, backed with fleece, and hand tied with yard over a lightweight poly batting.

Sophia's quilt

A bright, bold front (high contrast) and a bright, bold fleece backing make for a cheerful quilt for our friends' third child. If I remember correctly, we picked out the fleece for the back before we knew if Baby was going to be a girl or a boy, figuring we could pick out any of the colors for the yarn ties as was appropriate. Little did we know that Sophia was the second of what would become FIVE sisters!

Four inch denim squares, in a 10x14 grid, over light weight polyester batting and fleece backing.

Timmy's quilt

Timmy's quilt was slightly bigger than our normal ones so we could make a checkerboard in the center of it! On each end was a pocket (for keeping your checkers!) made from a pair of Dockers that had belonged to his dad (Andrew Garnett - also part of our InterVarsity Bible study group).

Machine pieced, some serging on the outer border, hand tied at every other interval, polyester batting, fleece backing.

Notice Owen again helping us out!

Genz quilt

I don't have a finished photo of this one, but this is pretty close to finished. It was made for a sewing client from her daughter's high school and college t-shirts as a graduation gift. The biggest challenge here was finding a good size to use. As you can see, we ended up using a standard square size and then making it out of a single shirt, horizontal or vertical half shirts, or even quarters of the square as necessary to get everything to fit and to highlight the best parts of each shirt. The one piece that wouldn't fit within our unit we sized to the unit plus sashing and made it the center point.

Machine pieced, hand tied, polyester batting (eventually!)

Nona's quilt, twin size (SewingBAG)

And a twin size version. This project was such a delight. So many little variations, and so neat to know that many family members were able to hold onto these special memories of their "Nona."

Machine pieced, hand tied, polyester batting.