November

We went up to NH for Thanksgiving and I had an opportunity to snap a photo to add to this series in front of the boys' great-grandfather's house. I love that Adam is laughing at JoJo crying. He's such a lovable jerk.

Ornaments and a baby quilt

 I embroidered these ornaments for the grandmothers this Christmas but I'm going to send them out before Thanksgiving since both our families put up their trees soon after the holiday. They were really easy to make; I even made one for myself so I can always remember how tiny their hands are right now. I used this method for finishing the backs; can't believe I didn't think of doing it that way before.

This may be one of my favorite quilts I've made. The two designers whose fabric I used (Heather Ross & Denyse Schmidt) are a couple of my favorites. I'm still trying to decide how to quilt it. It's 42" square so I can do it easily on my machine. Maybe stitching 1/4" off each seam? That always gives a really cool look.

Sept. 23

Jonathan has reached the ridiculously cute age of four months and I cannot stop taking pictures of him. I'm convinced this is the cutest age for babies, still so chubby and slightly infantile, but their personal features are starting to bud in their face and you can get glimpses and guesses of what they'll look like when they're older.

I don't want to keep posting pics on facebook because I know, although some of my friends have asked for more pictures of the boys, there are probably a lot of people who roll their eyes and are all "Ugh, more photos of your kids? Really?!" To those people I say- you can unfriend me, it won't hurt my feelings. In fact, I've probably been wanting to unfriend you so I don't have to look at your drunken duck face pics after every weekend. We'll call it even. I'm going to be posting a majority of pictures on here for a while. I had a photo blog but as you can tell I don't really even have time to keep up one blog, much less two.

So, LOOK AT MY ADORABLE BABY:

That middle one, it gets me. I think it's a strong contender for Jonathan's baby portrait. Remember Adam's? He was sleeping on a quilt Tom's grandmother made him.

A quick update

Here's an update on Adam's quilt. As you can see I made fake signal flag blocks (it's pretty bad when the Navy wife is too lazy to look in her kid's nautical ABC book). When Tom saw it he said some of them were actual flags so, HA! Anyway, I need to piece it together and add a row of sashing on the left and then figure out a back. I'm thinking about using that big beautiful sailboat print from Sarah Jane's Out to Sea collection and just have it sailing along the bottom back of the quilt with white going up the rest of the way.

And here are the boys hanging out this morning watching cartoons. It's cute how they already like to wrestle and goof around with each other.

I'm also working on three other baby quilts, two for girls, one "unknown". Fabrics for those include some Heather Ross, Sarah Jane (as mentioned above), and maybe some Denyse Schmidt. The big navy quilt for our bed was also dropped off with a long arm quilter on Sunday and I'm so excited to get it back and see how pretty it is and sleep under it! You know, in a few months.

The Playground

Sailboat Block Tutorial

In case you were wondering, here's how I made those cute sailboat blocks I made for Adam's quilt:

click on the pictures to make them larger

 Cut out 6"x 4.5" rectangles from your background fabric and your two prints. I used my little HST ruler thingy to mark two diagonal lines, 1/2" apart corner to corner, on the background fabric. Lay your background fabric cat-cornered, like in the last picture.

 Sew on those lines you drew then cut in between them. Repeat for your other print, but be sure to make the lines go in the opposite diagonal direction and lay it on the opposite corner, like in the last picture up there.

 Press your seams toward the darker fabric (in my case, the print). Square up your rectangles to 5"x 6.5". For the sail, choose the two fabrics that will point up to go together (if your print is directional). For the boat, trim the bottom triangles to 1.5".

 You can see we're almost there. Sew each boat piece to the sail piece on top of it. Press. Sew the two halves together. Press.

Square up your block to 6.5"x 7.5". And there you have it; a pretty little sailboat.

If you have any questions, shout 'em out!

PS- the fabric is Cloud9's "Seven Seas" collection. Super cute, right?

How to Draw Your Own Dresden Wedge

Hey everyone!

I had a request for the pattern I used for the lion quilt, so I am going to share with you how I made it. First of all what we're dealing with is basically a big ol' dresden circle. I didn't have a dresden ruler/template thingy, so I drew my own. You will end up with a (roughly) 24" circle. Here's how you do that:

1. Using a ruler, draw a 1.5" line on a piece of thick paper or cardboard (I used notebook paper just to show you).

2. From the exact center of your first line use a ruler to draw a perpendicular 9" line. So now you should have something that looks like an upside down T.

3. Now you're going to draw a 4 3/8" line, centering it on top of your second line. (FYI- half of 4 3/8" is 2 3/16").

4. Connect your top line to your bottom line and cut it out. You have a dresden wedge!

The down side to this is that you have to create a new wedge anytime you want a different sized dresden, but it is easily adjusted by making the 9" line however long you want it to be.

I pieced the dresdens so that I ended up with two halves.

For the lion's face, I drew out two half circles with the diameter of the dresden hole and sewed them curve to curve to each half, clipping the curves and ironing them. Then I sewed the halves together. And lastly I appliqued the eyes, cheeks, nose, and mouth before appliqueing the whole dresden onto my background fabric.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have a question!

PS- My friend Sae is giving away a custom designed logo for your blog or business! Check it out here.