Arrow Point Path ++ Baby Size

A co-worker was due to have a baby boy in January so I had just started planning her baby quilt when we found out that the doctors might induce the pregnancy early due to a medical condition.  The baby shower was all of a sudden scheduled less than a week out.  I needed to make a baby quilt and fast!

I decided to use one of my favorite patterns, Arrow Point Path.  I like how in this pattern, the block sizes are scaled so even at a baby size, you get the full impact the blocks and design.

I knew that I did not want to use a white background due to the quilt being for a baby, so I went up into my sewing room to see what I had available.  I have a bolt of the FreeSpirit Solid in Cerulean which looked perfect for a baby boy.

I combined the blue background with white, gray, and black scrap prints from my stash.  How is it that I cut all of the prints from my scrap bin and yet it does not look any smaller? :)

I picked a Me + You modern batik print for the backing.  The quilt was the perfect size to use with a single width of backing fabric, no piecing the backing, yeah!

The blocks came together quickly and easily and soon I was onto basting and quilting.  I quilted using a stipple (one of my favorite designs).  I timed myself and had the quilting complete in less than 18 minutes.

After a quick photo shoot, the baby quilt was washed and ready for gifting.

The mom loved the quilt and even better news was that she found out that she would most likely not have to deliver early!

If you want to pick up your own copy of Arrow Point Path (which contains instructions for baby, lap, twin, and queen sizes) you can get it in my pattern shop.

Here are the other two versions of Arrow Point Path I have made (both lap sizes).

Photo by Michelle Bartholomew

Bright Baby Quilt Finish

I have a fun finish to share with you today, I have named it my Bright Baby Quilt (innovative name right?)

I started this quilt in September  before my little roller skating tumble took me away from the sewing machine for a while.

I was making this baby quilt as a present for some of my sister's friends who are expecting a baby at the beginning of January. The couple had struggled for many years with infertility and so my sister wanted to gift them a bright and bold quilt. They are not finding out the sex of the baby so the quilt had to also be gender neutral. 

I used this jellyroll of FreeSpirit bold solid colors and took out a few of the pinks and purples to make the color palette more gender neutral.

I used the Wishes String Quilt pattern by Karen Vail (of Cascade Quilts) available as a free tutorial on the Moda Bake Shop. The pattern is really cool because you sew the jelly roll strips into a tube and then using a special ironing and cutting trick you wind up with blocks with the white strip centered along the diagonal. 

Here is a picture of my almost 15 year old kitty, Abby, modeling the blocks.

I sewed the blocks together and then added a white border to help control and distortion from quilting (because the blocks have all bias edges).

For the quilting, I kept it simple with some straight line echoing of the diamond shapes and then through the middle of the white stripes.

I am linking up to Link a Finish Friday, Whoop Whoop Friday, Thank Goodness Its Finished Friday, Finish It Up Friday, Fabric Frenzy Friday, and Show Off Saturday @ Sew Can She.

MQG Challenge Quilt Finished

I am excited that today I have a finish to share with you!  Here is my finish (just in time) for the Riley Blake Challenge from the Modern Quilt Guild.  

The rules for the challenge were as follows:

• Make something fantastic that is quilted.
• Make something you’ve never done before.
• Challenge yourself to learn something new.
• Use only Riley Blake Cottage Garden fabrics and coordinating Riley Blake basics and solids.

An equilateral triangle quilt has been on my to-do list forever and after I saw that some of the fabrics had a repeating triangle print, I was sold.  In addition to making a triangle quilt for the first time, this was also the first time I had ever bound a quilt without 90 degree corners.

I figured out how to design a triangle quilt in EQ and started playing with ideas. (Here is my tutorial on how to design triangle quilts using EQ7.)  The quilt actually came together much easier than I thought it would, I was always so afraid of sewing non-square or rectangle pieces, but it turned out that my fear was completely unfounded.  (Here is my in-progress post.)

I knew that for the quilting in the background areas, I wanted to echo the hexagon shape formed by the print fabrics and then fill in the remaining space with a dense back and forth quilting.  I also wanted to mimic the quilting from the print areas in some of the background triangles.

Figuring out the quilting for the print areas was more difficult.  I first started to quilt a star pattern within the print triangles but the quilting was difficult to see and not dense enough compared to the background.  I put out a call for help on Instagram (@MeadowMistDesigns) and got some wonderful suggestions.  I wound up using a ribbon candy design that not only looked good, but took much less time and had less threads to bury than my original plan.

I used Lorna's @ Sew Fresh Quilts tutorial on binding inside corners to figure out how to bind the quilt and while it is far from perfect, it turned out pretty decent.

The quilt finished at about 48" x 48", a perfect size for a new baby.  I have a new niece or nephew due this December and if the baby is a girl, I will be sending this quilt off to her.

Here are just some more pictures, including the pieced back, to celebrate the quilt's finish.
 

I am linking up to Link a Finish Friday, Whoop Whoop Friday, Thank Goodness Its Finished Friday, Finish It Up Friday, Fabric Frenzy Friday, and Show Off Saturday @ Sew Can She.

The MQG challenge quilt was also my July goal for ALYOF. (my goal setting post was here)

Building Blocks at the Moda Bake Shop

I am very excited to have another Moda Bake Shop tutorial posted today!!! Please hop over and check out Building Blocks. Thank you to all who are visiting from the Bake Shop!

I love all of Bonnie & Camille's fabric collections so I was incredibly excited to get to play with their new line Daysail.  I especially love the dark blues in the line, the are so rich and saturated.  

From my survey during the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day I found that many many people had trouble deciding what to with the charm packs they had hanging out in their sewing rooms.  For the pattern, my goal was to create a fun and beginner friendly quilt that uses only 1 charm pack.

The quilt is actually pieced as one large court house block with a center square and a number of borders.  The center square is also perfect to personalize using an appliqued or embroidered name.

I used a different quilt pattern for each of the types of borders:

In the center, I quilted pebbles using a white thread.  For the background borders, I quilted straight lines using a white thread.  For the charm square borders, I quilted a wood grain pattern using a light gray thread.  For the print borders (the dark blue boat print), I quilted a stipple pattern using a dark blue thread.

I hope you hope over to the Moda Bake Shop to check out the quilt and tutorial :)

I am linking up to Link a Finish Friday, Whoop Whoop Friday, Thank Goodness Its Finished Friday, Finish It Up Friday, Fabric Frenzy Friday,  Sewjo @ My Go Go Life, and Show Off Saturday @ Sew She Can.

This was also my January goal for ALYoF  Here was my January goal setting post.

WIP Wednesday 10/16/13

 

Welcome to my second WIP Wednesday.  Last week I featured my Oh Deer Baby Log Cabin quilt.  I actually finished it a few days ago and you can see it here.

This week I am working on finishing a baby sized dash churn quilt.  While I don't tend to have many WIPs, these blocks were made over a year ago as the first dash churn blocks I ever made using some scraps I bought from etsy.  I added some white sashing to set them apart and a little border.  The quilt top is basted and ready to be quilted (I even have the binding made).  The only question remaining is how to quilt it, any ideas?

Dash Churn Quilt (sorry for the icky night photo, the quilt really is square)

My other WIP is not really a WIP yet as I have not started it yet (does buying the fabric and washing it count?)  I am going to attempt a Washi dress.  As I have only made two dresses so far in my life (both for my daughter) this should be interesting.  The fabric on the left is a Joann's fabric that I got for $2.50 a yard so it will be my muslin.  The fabric on the right is a fabric from the Chicopee collection.

Thanks so much for stopping by!
Cheryl

I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!