Whitniffic Whatnots

I just love it when a whole bunch of seemingly unrelated things come together to make something beautiful. I finally got around to making the quilt for my friend Jamie's baby, who is now going on 8 months old. The baby's room is coral pink and navy blue with touches of chevron print. We originally designed a fairly complicated quilt with broken chevrons in all sorts of pinks, greys and navy. I LOVE how this looks, but I was intimidated a bit by attempting to figure out how much fabric I'd need and how best to piece it together. I think that's why it took me so long to get started on this project! We went through a lot of iterations to get to that point...   A change of direction was in order if I had a hope of finishing this thing before the little's first birthday... I know that Jamie also loves owls, and I found the same owl print I used in the Mod Owls Quilt in pink and grey on Fabric.com. This website is really becoming one of my favorite place...

Oh boy! I always hated math when I was in school... I just didn't get it. But you know what? I use geometry and algebra WAY MORE than I ever thought I would for my job as an art director/concept designer, and even for quilting! And I actually kind of enjoy it. So here's my latest predicament: I wanted to make a whole bunch of half square triangles to piece together and blend into a quilt with 9.5" squares. Obviously, I wanted to save some time doing it, so I opted for the "four at once" method, in which you sew two squares face to face all the way around the outer edges, then cut them apart with an X across the middle. But... what the heck size squares do I start with if I want them to be 9.5" when they're done? I originally assumed that, well, if I'm cutting the blocks apart, they're getting smaller in size, right? I don't remember what I did to get this number, but for some reason I wrote down on a sticky note that I needed 10.75...

Oh. My. Gosh. I never realized how hard it would be for me to choose a new sewing machine when the time came. This might be a really long post... I've owned three sewing machines in my life (not counting my Singer Serger), ranging from antique to pretty high-tech (so I thought). My mom bought me my first machine, a used light green 1957 Elna Supermatic, for Christmas when I was four years old. This thing is made of cast iron and weighed more than I did at the time, but I adored it and it's what I learned to sew on. My mom has a matching one in tan that her parents received as a wedding gift brand new. Mine is in need of repairs these days (mom's is still working great!), but I have talked to a local Elna dealer who said he'd love to try to fix it for me. This is not my machine... I have my mom looking for a photo of me with it!   When my husband and I moved into our first apartment, he bought me a Singer Curvy for my birthday. It was definitely a tech upg...

I can't believe I forgot to post finished pictures of the Mod Owls quilt! What the heck!? Well, here they are! Gosh, I just love the backing with those little woodpeckers! :) Gotta add a bit of "nature", right? Ha ha... AKA Christmas tree branches. And, let's not forget the cute little fox pillow... who am I kidding! Ha ha, I did forget to take pictures of it. My aunt sent me this one last night when she was visiting with little Will. I've got another quilt planned to use the same owl fabric (in pink!) for a friend I'd promised to make one for... and her little girl is 7 months old already! Oopsies! Fabric.com is one of my new best friends...

I've got little batik squares coming out of my ears! After I whipped up my table runner and four matching square place mats, I still had a whole bunch of batik squares that were too pretty to just put away and forget about. I decided to try my hand at some half square triangle (HST) action.  This was fun! I tried the method of placing two squares face to face, drawing a line down the center, and stitching two rows- 1/4" away from the line on each side. You then cut it apart on the line to create two HSTs at once. Handy! I worked up a whole bunch of contrasty little squares really quickly. Then I went for the layout. I really liked this HST quilt that I found on Pinterest, but I didn't have enough squares to make the spiral really prominent and it kind of  reminded me of a symbol I didn't really want to be associated with. My suspicions were confirmed when I asked my hubby and he flat out said, "It looks like a swastika". Yup. Back to the drawing boar...