Baby Quilts

Soon after I discovered I was pregnant in 2003, I decided that I needed to make my baby a quilt. I bought "The It's Okay if You Sit on my Quilt Book" from Amazon for instructions and ideas. I started working on it - I had enough fabric to make 2, one for me and one for my sister who discovered she was due with her second child around the same time as me. Progress came to a screeching halt when I miscarried in July. The fabric and the book sat untouched in my craft closet (I would burst into tears when I saw it). I even ended up making my sister's baby a completely different quilt.

When I found out I was pregnant again, it took me a while to pull out the supplies, but eventually I did and made this "Triple Rail Fence" quilt for Roderic. The quilt is tied with embroidery floss.

Pregnant again in 2006 and my baby needed a quilt. This time I found inspiration on the Internet and made a "Hugs and Kisses" quilt for Hyrum. The quilt is both machine quilted and hand quilted. The straight lines were quilted by machine and the circles I did by hand.


This time around, I used "The It's Okay if You Sit on my Quilt Book" for a pattern ("Mandevilla"). I started buying the fabric weeks before I was ready to tell people I was pregnant. I made a goal to have the quilt finished and ready to bind before my trip to San Francisco, because binding a quilt is a good on the airplane activity. And the flight was just long enough for me to finish it!


For the back of this quilt, I used flannel (I usually use flannel for backing on baby quilts - it's softer). One problem with flannel is that it shrinks a. lot. when you wash it. Since this pattern is a square quilt, I needed a square back, but all in flannel wasn't going to work unless I put some seams in, which I'm not a huge fan of. I ended up using some of the left over fabric from the front to make it a little more interesting. I like how it turned out.

And for full disclosure, it was Stacy's idea for me to bind the quilt in turquoise. I was hesitant at first, but I really like how it turned out!

Violin Camp, day 2

The traffic to drive to and from Draper has not been bad so far. In fact, this morning we left the Ludlow's at 7:35 am and arrived at the school at 8:25. Tomorrow we'll leave even later. The first class is at 9 am.

The first class of the day was Repetoire. Mr. Hutchins from Maryland is letting everyone in the class take turns being the leader of their master class song, going in order of birthdays. The first student is played a song that Sabrina hasn't learned yet. Instead of being asked to sit down and listen he had her (and everyone else who hadn't learned it) to play the first part and the last part because it's the same as in another song she does know.

Next up was Technique. Mr. Van Reeth from Ohio involved the students right at tuning by having them play a rhythm and then he asked them what song they know how to play has that rhythm. Sabrina gave the correct answer, "Theme from Witches Dance" by Paganini. He gave them homework of learning the composers names of several songs they played. And he told them a cool story about a bowline fish under the dock, dangling feet into the water almost being tickled by the fish, a baby cousin who came along with two bumps and another cousin who is scared of putting their feet into the water. The kids made some great bowholds after that.

I have been working on binding a quilt for my mom during the classes. When I first had the idea to work on it this week, I thought it would take me quite some time. But, I guess since it is a lap quilt (and I sew fast?) it didn't take me long. I finished the last stitches during her Master class. [My mom bought the quilt at a scout auction. The top was pieced and the batting and backing were attached with pins. When we were down over Memorial Day weekend, she gave me the quilt and asked me to finish it. I quilted it using Angie's awesome quilting sewing machine last Thursday and then made a bias binding on Saturday.]

The Student Honor Recital today featured Rocky Mountain Strings, a group of 34 violinists. They played 4 pieces, each one directed by a different violinist from the group. Millionaire Hoedown is a crowd pleaser, especially when there are actions involoved.

Care package on its way

My 5 year old niece is going in for surgery at Primary Children's Medical Center on Monday. When I asked her mom what Janica would like for us to send her, her reply was "the story of Beauty and the Beast." Sabrina is sending Janica her Belle doll that she bought with her own money in 2004 (while visiting Nebraska because she forgot to bring "Baby Bunny" to sleep with and was quite distraught). Now we're hoping that this doll will bring some more comfort to a recovering cutie-pie. We hope you like the care package Janica! Have a speedy recovery!



I got the instructions on how to make the bag here. Sometimes it comes in really handy to have a large fabric stash.

Quilting Bee

Last fall, when Ryan was on his week long adventure in the Sawtooth mountains of Idaho, Sabrina and I painted her bedroom. Blue. It had been pink since we moved in 2.5 years ago. With the walls no longer pink, the green ivy and pink flower quilt I made in high school (Laurel project) no longer matched her room, so I decided I needed to make her a new quilt. Sabrina picked out all of the fabrics for this quilt and I learned how to appliqué. The pattern wanted every solid block to have a flower appliquéd on it, but that became too overwhelming, so I did 5 instead of 20.

After helping a friend tie a quilt for her father-in-law, I decided that it would be good for Sabrina to invite friends over to help tie hers. Last month I had the brilliant idea to make me a deadline for getting the quilt done this weekend when they had no school. She invited 8 friends, but only 4 were able to come. The quilt was tied in 40 minutes. They were so fast! I wonder how fast it would have been if all 8 would have come! They had another 90 minutes before the parents would return, so they played a couple of rounds of "Curses". During that time I worked on binding the quilt and I got it finished before dinner, so she was able to sleep under it that night.

(Unfortunately, the blues on the quilt clash with the blue of the room. I think we may have to repaint...)

Happy Birthday Grandma!

and the bigger ones tied the quilt.

Randomness tied together

So I've had 4 or 5 posts swimming in my head this week, but I haven't taken the time until now to type them down. The kids are in bed and Ryan is at the Temple.

Sisters:
Last Sunday night, I went to a fireside that our Stake Relief Society put on, entitled "Sisters All Are We". It got me to thinking how much I love my 3 sisters.

• We sing Barbershop together. We've done some hilarious renditions of songs at weddings with altered lyrics ("In the Good Old Summertime" for Holly & Bob and "Last Night on the Back Porch" for Keturah & Brook)
  
• Growing up, I would take their clothes from their closets and wear them. There are few advantages of being the youngest sister.
  
• Milaka was not only my Bradley Childbirth Instructor, but also my "doula" when I had Sabrina.
• Shanda was game in planning a trip to Europe to pick up Keturah from her mission. I provided the cheap plane tickets. She provided the cheap hotels.
• Keturah helped me go to the store on Valentine's day 1995 to buy a gift, after Ryan had called and told me he had something to give me. (It was the book "Believing Christ". I made him sit in our front room and write something to me on the inside cover of the book.)
• The first quilt I ever pieced together was for Shanda's oldest boy. She gave it back to me when he was 2 because she said it meant more to me than to him.
• After Keturah and Milaka got hooked on watching "What Not to Wear", shopping together became even more enjoyable.
• We all went to see Harry Connick, Jr. in concert in SLC after eating at the Melting Pot.
  

I really love my sisters. Its hard to live far away from them. I'm happy I get to see 2 of them this month. FYI this photo was taken of me and my sisters at Lagoon in 1991.

Soccer:
Can you believe the soccer season has started again? I thought Sabrina's coach was kidding in his email three weeks ago that it was time for practices to start up again. (There was lots of snow on the ground at the time.) He was serious. For the first two weeks of practice, they met in our church gym and played. This week they were outside at the elementary school and the first game was today! After a warm front pushed through here for the last 2 days, we got back to cold, wet weather. It said it was 40 degrees this morning, but felt like 19 with the rain. Ryan stayed home with the boys. I got to be the line judge. Sabrina played defender and goalie. The ending score was Blue Dolphins (Sabrina's team) 7, Red Devils 2.

Quilting:
So my last quilting class was on Tuesday. We learned how to make binding and bind the quilt and how to blind appliqué with a machine. Really cooll stuff. My sewing machine has sat on a corner of my kitchen table for more than a week now because I REALLY WANT TO QUILT MY QUILT, but that hasn't ever made it up to the "Better" list. Perhaps this week? Probably not due to our trip to Utah on Thursday for Allison's wedding.

Volunteering at School:
Last year, Sabrina entered a musical composition in the school's Reflections contest. She won first prize. It went to be judged at the district level. She won first prize. It went on to the state level. She won Honorable Mention. After the award ceremony for the state prize, she was bawling because our school had just stopped being members of the PTA, so we would not be eligible to participate in Reflections again, and she would not be able to win any more medals. In steps Mom. I single-handedly created, organized, etc, etc, etc the 2008 Trail Wind Elementary School PTO Art Contest. The entries were due last Friday. The awards ceremony was yesterday. There were 124 entries in 6 categories. Sabrina entered a musical composition. She won first prize. (I was not the judge.)

Transmission:
We got to get a new transmission for our 2002 Honda Odyssey. As the service manager at Larry Miller Honda said, "Your transmission needs to go to heaven." Driving home from Roderic's tumbling class last Monday, I couldn't go faster than 25mph. Even with the engine doing 3000rpm. Then the malfuction indicator light turned on. Then the TCS light turned on. Then the D (for drive) light started flashing! It was scary to drive the van like that. The good news is that it was part of a recall (that I don't remember hearing about but my neighbor with a 2001 model does) so we paid $0.

Pipe Organs:
Yesterday afternoon, Sabrina's violin teacher organized a special treat for all of her students. We were invited to Immaneul Lutheran Church downtown for an organ demonstration. In their group lessons they've been talking about Bach and she thought it would be neat for the students to get to hear Bach's music on his primary instrument. I learned so much. Did you know that they control the volume on pipe organs by opening and closing shutters that lead to a room with pipes in it? Did you know that every rank has one pipe for every key on the keyboard? Did you know that organs can get out of tune? That church's organ was out of tune. Aparently there is no organ tuner in Boise, they have to fly in from SLC or SEA. Our ward organist is holding an "Organ Workshop" to teach interested people to play the organ. It begins on Tuesday. I'm planning on going.

Now if you've gotten to the end of this, and still don't see how all of this randomness is tied together, please realize that I typed it thus it is together.

Ohio Star, revisited

Last September, I took a beginning quilting class at The Quilt Crossing. If you don't remember it, you can read all about it here. Well, I was supposed to sew together the 6 blocks and sign up for the second series of the class before October 23. With our super-humanitarian-project-Saturday, that I was in charge of and needed to make 10 pair of pjs bottoms for, I didn't get around to it until 6 days before the class was to start. Not enough people signed up for it, so they cancelled it the day before I called! Talk about being sorry for being a procrastinator (no matter what the excuse is). The store didn't offer any more Tuesday night classes until now. As soon as I found out the dates, I called to sign up. I didn't want me to be the reason of a class cancelled again.

At class 4 (having done classes 1-3 in September), we learned how to attach the sashing and borders. I decided to have cornerstones in my sashing and I really like how it turned out. Before I had the borders sewn on, I had it hanging on the wall in the kitchen with straight pins, so people coming over could comment on it (and they did!). After finishing sewing on the borders, I took the completed quilt top to my bedroom and hung it on the wall with masking tape, so I could see what it will look like when I'm all finished. (I was a little worried that the turquoise of the quilt and the blue of my bedroom wall would clash.)


At class 5, we learned how to do the actual quilting. We took in two 12" squares of fabric so that we could practice on something before puting it on our quilts. The walking foot and darning foot are REALLY neat to sew with. Learning about these two feet alone have made this class totally worth it. I've decided to "stitch in the ditch" on the blocks of the quilt, do a puzzle quilting technique on the sashing and cornerstones and then go to Stacy's fancy embroidery machine to put on a pattern. I'm thinking about a braid right now.



Class 6 is next week, where we'll learn how to bind the quilt. Once again using the 12" "quilt" from week 5.

Lifelong learning!

Christmas Sewing Projects

I did a lot of sewing in November and December (on the verge of being too much for Ryan's liking). I must say that I am super pleased with what I made though. You've already seen the baby striped quilt and our Christmas pjs, but you haven't seen these:

Sabrina's Christmas Dress.

An original UGLY Quilt for Shelly.

We had Shelly & Paul for our gift exchange and I decided that I would make her an UGLY quilt. To make it even better, though, I called her up at the end of September and asked if she had any scrap fabrics that she'd like to give me for a rag quilt I was working on. I also asked Genette for scraps, so Shelly wouldn't get suspicious. Over General Conference weekend, I picked up both of their scraps -lots and lots of fabric! 95% of the fabric on the quilt is Shelly's, the last little bit is from my stash because, a) I didn't have any more of Shelly's cut and b) I wanted it to be a part of me as well. I put on patches from Argentina, BYU and Layton and gave them the instruction to add patches for all the places they visit. And of course, I made a tag for it (but I finished it in Utah and didn't take any pictures of it before giving them the quilt).

The cutest aprons you ever saw!

While walking through a fabric store with NO children one August day, I came across a pattern for a reversible apron. I bought it on the spot. Then, in October, when the cousin gift exchange list came and Sabrina had Ryan's 19 year old neice, I decided the apron would be a perfect gift for her to make. So Sabrina picked out the purple fabrics. I picked the pink and greens because I needed to make up one before helping Sabrina make the other one. They turned out so cute! And both Allie and Missy put them right on to model for everyone at the party. Don't be too surprised if you see these recreated throughout the year.

Their stockings were hung...

When we were newlyweds and I worked for a company that basically paid me to cross-stitch on the job, I started making Christmas Stockings. It took several years to finish them, but by Sabrina's first Christmas, I had 3 completed. Roderic was celebrating his 2nd Christmas when I got his finished.

Now we're approaching Hyrum's 2nd Christmas and cross-stitching a whole stocking is not a high priority. Rather than give up and buy Hyrum a stocking, I decided that I could make a quilted one. Last night I finished it! I worked on cross-stitching his name and "Nadolig Llawen" (Merry Christmas in Welsh) during Roderic's gymnastics class (and also some late nights). At least his will have some continuity with the others. It was a lot of fun to machine quilt this project, thanks to Stacy's description of how to do it.


In case you're wondering, each stocking has "Merry Christmas" stitched in a different language. So far I've used Russian, French, Dutch, Danish and Welsh.

New Baby, New Quilt

After returning from Russia, it was apparent that my friend was having another baby. She was 'forced' into sharing her news because her abdomen had popped out. I decided I could make her a quilt for her baby, so I called and asked what her favorite colors are. She replied, "What am I doing with these colors? Wearing them? Decorating with them? Eating them?" I told her, "Cuddling a baby with them." With that information she told me greens and purples because she would find out the sex of the baby at birth. I saw a stripy quilt at Quilter's Crossing that I thought I could do, so I decided that would be the quilt for this baby. It was really easy to piece. And with the help of Stacy's fancy embroidery sewing machine, I was able to quilt it with a fancy loop-de-loop stitch.

I am pleased with the results.

And once again, I embroidered a tag for the back. Still love my signature in thread! And don't you just love the material I found for the back of the quilt?

Ohio Star

I've now attended the 3 classes in the first session of beginning quilt making. The instructor was very helpful. For my quilt, I've decided to make 6 blocks. When I'm done, it will hang on a wall in my bedroom.

For homework after the first class, I had to go shopping for fabric. I'm glad I had Stacy there with me to pick out the fabric. The next step was washing, drying and ironing! I had no idea that ironing was such an important part of quilting. This was the first time I ironed fabric right after pulling it out of the dryer.

At class 2, we learned how to cut the fabric. Rotary cutters are my friend! The homework for this class was cutting out the squares and triangles needed. Happily, I got this done in class, so all I needed to do at home was clip the corners of the triangles. With the corners clipped, the sewing should go smoothly.

Laying out the fabric--just to see.

Yesterday afternoon, when I layed out the fabric in the Ohio Star design, I couldn't see the star. I thought I might need to change out the fabric to make it more dramatic. But there was no time to do that before class, so I decided that I'd sew one at class and then change the fabric for the other 5.

However, after sewing and pressing the one block at class, I am able to see the star and I think it looks pretty good. Our teacher gave us some awesome hints on how to sew triangles without pinning them. I am so glad I'm taking this class!

My first completed Ohio Star block.

Now, to get ready for the second session of beginning quilting class, I need to sew the remaining 5 blocks and then purchase sashing and border fabric. Can I get this done by Oct. 23? I plan to.

I'm so excited!

Earlier this year, my mom recommended a series of books for me to read because I was nursing a lot, so I had a lot of reading time available. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about these quilters and so I started looking into taking a quilting class in the spring. I found several stores around Boise that offered beginning quilting classes, and decided that was for me. The reason I couldn't start then is because I nurse my babies, and this one doesn't like a bottle. I even told Stacy that she would need to sign up with me to take the class (although her husband now refutes that she would even like to learn how to quilt). Long story short...

TONIGHT IS THE FIRST CLASS!!

In the first 3 meetings of the class, we're going to learn about designing and drafting a quilt, color, fabric selection and machine piecing. That seems all fine and dandy. In classes 4-6, we're going to learn how to set them, add borders, determine and mark quilting designs, quilting techniques and attaching binding. Its the last 3 classes that I'm most excited for, but in order to get to that stuff, you need quilt blocks, and that is what we make in the first 3 classes. All things must go in order.

UGLY Quilt

My friend Fe' showed me the quilt her sister-in-law made for her as a Christmas gift last year, an UGLI Quilt. Made with various fabrics, even with some from Fe's mom's fabric stash, and patches from all the places that she has lived, with instructions for adding more patches as necessary.

The next day, when I was commiserating with Stacy about Danielle's upcoming move, we got the genius idea to make an UGLY Quilt for Danielle. We don't care about the places she's lived before or the places she may yet live in, we just want her to remember us. We got right to work. We decided to make it truly ugly by using scrap fabric pieces from other projects. To make it more interesting, we only used each fabric once on the quilt. This caused us to run out of fabric, so we called Danielle and asked that since she was moving, could we have some of her fabric scraps. She was completely unsuspecting and happily gave us a box. Instead of using patches to mark all of the cool things around town that her family will miss, we used Stacy's embroidery machine. We envision this quilt being used for picnics in the park, not being put on a bed -- although what an honor that would be for the person who slept under it ;) -- so we wanted a fabric that would be really sturdy and not let water soak through right away (sometimes the sprinklers run the morning you go to the park). After walking around JoAnn Fabric for a while, we came across a denim that really lends itself to the UGLY Quilt title.


My mom recommended to me the Elm Creek Quilts series of books by Jennifer Chiaverini, which I also now recommend to others who like to read historical fiction and quilt. In those books, the characters are always talking about tags on the backs of quilts so you know more about the quilt and quilters, so of course I had to embroider one for this quilt. (I've decided that I really like how my handwriting looks embroidered, I may have to do this more often.)

Stacy and I pose with the finished quilt just after giving it to Danielle.
And we 3 test it out on Danielle's front lawn.

Right after we tied the quilt, I had it on the floor to get the binding pinned up. Clara and Roderic were walking across it and every-so-often Clara would stop and say, "That's my dress! That's Amber's shirt! That's Roderic's chair! That's my jacket! That's Sara's dress!" etc. It just summed up for me this quilt...lots and lots of good memories.