Four Quilts by the Young Women

My daughter's Young Women church group had 3 pregnant leaders last year. 

One was pregnant with twins. 

So I was excited to help them learn to quilt. Groups of 2 or 3 girls each made a quilt for one of the leaders. 

Baby boy quilt by Emily and Sydney. The patterned fabric is a bunch of cars.

Anna, Morgan and Lindsay made this cowboy/country themed Rail Fence quilt for the little boy twin.

McKinna, Olivia and Emilie made this rail fence design for the girl twin.

Megan and Emma made this cute blue/green quilt for a baby boy (who happened to be Emma's nephew).

The girls did everything from picking out the fabric, to piecing and quilting. Because time was getting away from us and those babies refused to wait until we finished, I ended up doing most of the binding and some quilting on a few. But I think everyone learned a lot and had fun. 

Heidi's cousin gets a matching quilt -Chevron Style

With all the extra pieced diagonal stripes from Heidi's quilt, I made a matchy one for her cousin who was due less than a month after her. 

This time I laid them out Chevron Style. 

I had a fewer number of strips for this quilt so it got a border too.

And I sort of ran out of the backing fabric so I had to make due with what I had left over.

 (Same with the binding.)

Here they are together. 

Baby Girl Cousin Quilts

Herringbone Quilt for Heidi

This quilt was a little more difficult than I anticipated. My brain thought...

I can just make a bunch of strips (long vertical columns) of these diagonal stripes. 

See this tutorial for HOW TO on TheSewingChick.com

(You stagger the long strips of material and sew them together and then cut them into long rows.)

 

But I just thought you could do this the one way and just flip the strip upside down and it would automatically be going the other direction. Uh...No. The are all still going the same directions. DUH! I had to do a whole other set of strips staggered the other direction. So...I ended up with way more pieced strips than I needed. 

You'll see the twin quilt I made for this baby's cousin in another post.

 Sewing the strips together was ALSO harder than I expected. They stretched like crazy (because everything is cut on the bias which really makes the cotton fabric stretchy.) I ended up with really bumpy, distorted pieces. So I picked the first row apart and ended up pinning the vertical rows (columns?) all the way down and being really careful not to stretch them.

It was still a bit of a bumpy mess,

but after ironing and then quilting the whole project and washing it...

It turned out really cute.

Charming?

I love the wrinkled look which reminds me of antique quilts and hand quilting.

This was a gift for my friend, Breanne, and her baby girl, Heidi.

A Pillow for Everything

After making the quilt for Larry, I had this other project in mind for Colter.

They have a beautiful cat named Everything. (Evy for short.)

They really love this cat. 

And I wanted to do a Punch Needle project for Colter, 

thinking he'd probably like the different embroidery technique. 

Punch Needle is sort of like miniature rug hooking. 

When asking my sister, Ally, for ideas of gifts for Colter and Larry, she reminded me that they just LOVE Everything (their cat).

So this little picture popped into my head of their cat sitting on the back of an armchair looking out a window. It's just how imagine him to be. 

And of course there's a quilt on the back of the armchair.

(and it happens to look like the quilt I made for them. haha. I know. I'm clever that way.)

I made it into a pillow. I used a pieced square that I had already made a long time ago. (I have a bunch of them, but not quite enough for a quilt...)

It's a hand cramper, that's for sure. 

And this is the picture Colter sent to me. 

Awww.

The many faces of the Log Cabin Quilt

Hmmmm. Someone's been quilting all day!

I thought I'd show a few of the MANY faces that can come from just this ONE square. 

(or a lot of them I guess.)

The LOG CABIN SQUARE:

So...Just scroll through for a sampling of some of the designs you can make using that Log Cabin Square.

Here's the same idea  only the REVERSE. 

That one up there is really close to the one I chose to do. 

(Just turn each corner square around so the color is in the corner, not the white.) 

Same as above only reverse:

Chevron look:

(This is the one I chose for Larry's quilt.)

I'm pretty sure there are a lot more designs than these. It's such a diverse square.

Bold Colors Log Cabin for Larry (and Colter)

This is Colter and Larry.

Colter is an Artist. Larry is a director for the Berkeley Art Museum . 

So you can imagine that I was feeling a bit intimidated at the prospect of making a quilt worthy of two ULTRA artistic individuals. 

Then I was reminded that they appreciate individuals and effort and pretty much all forms of art and all different levels ...

And, well..they'd love whatever I made for them! 

So I chose the classic, traditional LOG CABIN design. 

It carries so much history and legend. It really has some meaning, ya know? I knew they'd appreciate that aspect. Though a classic design, it has a modern twist with the bold, bright colors. 

(inspiration quilt)

I made this quilt for Larry since I already did a quilt for Colter back in 2008. My goal is to make at least one for each family member. (not sure about all the nieces and nephews, though I am doing good with the younger ones by making them baby quilts when they are born.)

I quilted each line, which looked really nice and wrinkly -the way I like it- after I washed it.

I had a hard time sending it away because it just looked so good in my house!

 The back was some weird flannel-ish fabric I found at a thrift shop a while ago.

I hope it holds up...

About to be sent to Berkeley, CA. 

Wave goodbye! sniff...