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."

Gloria's quilt

Gloria's is probably right up there with my favorite quilt that I've ever made. It's kind of funny because one of my first favorites had a similar color scheme. The design/layout is one that just came to me. I sketched it out once on paper, and then adjusted it slightly to come up with this. The variety of scale of the stars and squares allowed me to use some bigger chunks of fabric that I had as well as sneaking in some small leftover bits that have special meaning (like the purple paw print that all of the kids' quilts have in them). I particularly like how the stars (the large one and one of the small ones) break the borders.

The quilting was as much fun as the piecing - the stars are outlined with varying thicknesses of space between the rows, and the field is stipple/swirl free-motion quilted, making the back of the quilt almost as interesting as the front.

As I've done on other more recent quilts, I've taken advantage of the seams that are a necessity to get quilt-sized backing fabric, and accented it with a strip of left over tidbits of the front fabrics.

Gloria was about three years old when I finished the quilt.

Bobbi's quilt

This was supposed to be finished two years ago, but instead I managed to quickly finish it up on the two-year anniversary of Bogomila's home-coming from Bulgaria.

I decided to make Bobbi's quilt a full-size bed quilt instead of the throw/snuggle size that I did for the other kids who got theirs as babies. Good thing, too, since she's a legitimate eighteen-year-old adult now by the time I finished it!

The color scheme was based on her telling us she liked black and blue, and green and purple. The fabrics are a fun mix of leftovers from other projects and some that I purchased just for her.

The purple paw print has featured in every one of the kids' other quilts (well, Krassi's has a green version I found of it), and the one at the bottom is a large-scale cabbage print!! That one I bought in honor of Bobbi's love of cabbage. Again, all of this was purchased and begun before we really knew her, so I'm happy now when I've been working on it and she tells me that it's one of the prettiest quilts she's seen. She's not known for meaningless flattery, so I know she really likes it.

I was particularly excited about the black and gray background fabric. That was probably the most challenging part of the quilt - finding something that would function as a solid (which you can see it does in the photo of the whole quilt), but that would not be too boring up close, since it's such a large percentage of the quilt. The mild herringbone mimics the pattern of the pieced "feathers" while still acting as a neutral.

Quilting this one was an interesting challenge as well. I started with the background, following the linear pattern of the fabric, back and forth, back and forth, but wasn't sure what to do for the feathers. I had to sketch quite a few back options before finding a motion that was simple enough to do without having to rotate the quilt in the machine, but still was an effective enough suggestion of feathery-ness.

On the back of the quilt you can see more clearly how the two machine-quilted patterns work together:

I used my favorite low-loft cotton batting. The narrow binding was made from a conglomeration of scraps I had laying around to avoid a trip out to the fabric store!

(The inspiration for the pattern of the quilt top came from this book: Strip your Stash)

Wedding quilt

This was a fun project done for the midwife who delivered our first four babies. It's always kind of scary cutting up something as special as a wedding dress, but once it's started, it's kind of fun! There were a few different layers of fabric to work with here, and in different sizes. Figuring out how to design the pieces was an interesting challenge before the work even began. The block-pieced sashing includes fabric from the groom's and groomsmen's shirts and ties!

I will have to look back to see when I actually completed this project. In the meantime, I'm just happy she remembered to send me photos!!!

Made with Bobbi

After being inspired by Leah's and then Owen's quilt, Bobbi decided she wanted to make one, too.

What I've loved about making these with my kids is how different each one looks even when made from the exact same pattern.

Fun details about this quilt is the mix of Mom's leftovers (Buzz lightyear and Woody, cats on motorcycles, that funky neon one on the left, and some solids that fit with the color scheme), a few that Bobbi picked out on her own (the Batman flannel, the horses), and the blue stars donated by Kelsey, her occupational therapist. The finishing touch was the Superman fleece on the back in honor of Dad.

One beautiful thing about the directions for this project is that it suggests using no batting, so only having to wrestle with two layers. The fleece offers warmth, and with the smaller size, it's not too bulky.

Bobbi and I did the cutting with a rotary cutter hand over hand, and the sewing was done with Bobbi on the pedal and Mom at the machine itself, and I didn't lose any fingers. It probably took us six months from start to finish, but we did it! She was pretty pleased with the results, and equally proud of the 4H blue ribbon at the county fair.

 It was pretty neat, too, to come back later in the week and see the burgundy "award of excellence" added next to the blue.

She ended up taking the quilt to the State Fair as well, and only got a red level ribbon, but she was satisfied, knowing that it's a solid middle-of-the-road award leaving room for improvement, and she was inspired to start another project this year. We'll see what comes of that!

Resourcefulness quilt #2

It's been four years, and we're back talking about resourcefulness, but this time Owen and Leah got to take the lead on designing the quilt. The only stipulations were that 1) they had to only use fabrics that we already had in the house and 2) they had to agree on the design.

Their solution was to use color as a unifying factor. We didn't have the same pre-cut uniformity that was available for the last quilt, but decided to make use of the pre-cut squares that we already had. They each had veto power for any fabric that they didn't want in the quilt, as long as there was still enough in the color family to make the design work. Even deciding how to stitch the quilting lines (and what color!!) was a major deal, but at the end of the day (or month, or year or however long it took!) we got a pretty nice finished product! The finished size is the same oversized throw that the last Resourcefulness Quilt ended up being.

I should mention, too, that although Rinnah wasn't as involved in the design, she was quite involved in the stitching. The kids (Owen and Leah) ended up taking the quilt to the county fair with 4H.

Machine quilted with cotton batting. Backing red/black plaid flannel. All machine pieced and rotary cut.

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.