Quilt for my GREAT Nephew Nixon

I'm a GREAT aunt. Not just great in the extraordinary, wonderful sense but in an I-am-getting-so-OLD sense. My nephew, Michael and his beautiful wife, Mareassa, gave birth to cute little Nixon. I chose to do a SIMPLE quilt so I could get it done quickly and in the mail.

I heard they were doing a tepee/arrows theme in his room so I found some cute fabrics to match. (Hobby Lobby)

 So easy. Quilting is just about 1/4 inch next to seams, on both sides of the seam.

  Here's Nixon. Much older now that I'm getting around to blogging about the quilt. 

Poppy Quilt for Poppy

My beautiful friend Sam had a baby girl (about 2 years ago). Sam is this young and trendy beauty and I just wanted to make her a hip "Pinterest worthy" quilt. Well, I should have copied something from Pinterest then, because, I am sorry to say, I think I sort of missed the mark! Haha. I mean, it's okay and everything. But it was not a normal Ivy quilt with all the many colors and randomness, so I found it more difficult to figure out. Ended up with simple squares cuz nothing else was looking good!

I knew she was naming her Poppy so I found some fabric with Poppies on it. There were all sorts of other fabrics that matched the poppies perfectly, but I just can't bring myself to do matchy matchy. So..I wandered the HUGE quilt shop and found a few other fabrics to "go with" the poppies that reminded me of my cute Sam and her fun personality. She is absolutely adorable and makes the most adorable babies.

Red and grey dominate this quilt, with some lighter pink shades and just a small pop of light blue.
I quilted on either side of the seams.

To be honest, this was a hard quilt for me to figure out how piece. Because I'd found all these fabrics in different areas of the quilt shop, none of the were meant to go with each other. Later at home, when I put them together, they didn't actually work like I'd hoped.

Enter Ian.

I was laying out all different patterns getting more and more frustrated. And Ian would walk by me and randomly start moving them around in a better way, explaining color saturation and other technical artistic terms. He helped me see why the grey tones of the bird fabric with the black and white of the bikes were odd. He has a pretty artistic eye and he'd magically arrange them just a bit better.

The bicycle print was originally only black and white. It needed a bit of color to tie in with the other fabrics so I chose just a few girls to color in with sharpies.

The bird fabric was originally in all grey tones and felt too washed out, so I chose just one or two on each square to darken the outline with a black sharpie. It made a big difference tying it in with the b/w bicycles.

I did soak it in vinegar water and washed it before giving it to her, so hopefully the colors set fine. (The little birds already had the "watercolor" which I think is the reason the girls/bikes needed some color.)

With all the tweaking, I think the fabrics worked out well in the end.

Left over fabric led me to make a small doll quilt for her sister, Goldie. (Cute names, eh?)
Now looking back, I wish I'd had more of the large grey/white polka dots for the large quilt...
Oh well.

Quilts for the Scout Fundraiser

Every year, the scouts need to figure out how to pay for all their scout camps. More often than not, they create some kind of fundraiser where the parents end up paying for scouts anyway.

Granted, we DO get yard work, spaghetti or something else for our troubles!

This particular time, we had a silent auction. 

We were to donate items (that we made or paid for), then buy those items back. 

Genius.

I decided a baby quilt was easy enough. I had all the fabric, batting, thread I needed. So I quickly whipped out 2 simple random square baby quilts. 

This one was super easy because I already had the squares sewn together. Just needed batting and a back. These fabrics I used for a quilt for Ian when he was little. Then had larger squares all sewn together to make a twin size that I never finished. In fact I'd already chopped it once to make a quilt a few years ago for a friend's grandbaby.

 That red fabric is a washable satin, so it's shiny. :)

The back is a sheet I found somewhere and already had. It matched fairly well, so ...

I just rolled the back around to the front to make the edge.





Those are cute little pirate ships. This fabric was the inspiration for the whole color scheme.

 It went for 20 bucks.

This second quilt, is obviously more of an IVY quilt. I had lots of bright fabrics in my stash. 

Can't believe it but I happen to have a big enough piece of the polka dots for the back. Guess I bought a lot when I made this fox quilt.

I stippled the whole quilt. (Free motion quilting)

It went together really fast. 

You can tell how much I liked this one by how many pictures I took of it.

These aren't all of them.

 Hi, Ian! Wanna see what I bought at the auction?

This cute quilt.

hee hee

Well.

 It was only going for 20 bucks. 

I knew I'd be paying for scout camp one way or another, so I bid $40. 

And now I can say that my quilts earned those boys $60! 

This is where it resides in my house. :)

A Quilt for Hugh

We didn't know Hugh was a boy until he was born.

 And I wanted to get started on a quilt for him (or her...)

So I actually went out and bought some cute retro fabrics for this quilt. 

And then when I sewed them together, I wasn't super happy with the colors I'd chosen. 

So I tried this blue border, but it still just felt muddy.

And so I broke out the White. Duh. 

I know myself. I know my quilts. I have to have that white to make it pop the colors.

It's still sort of pastel, but Sofie and Ethan assured me they like the colors.

The vintage fabrics are super cute! Look closely and you'll see ducks, and farm animals, birds and bees. 

          Still, it needed the blue square in the white lattice to add a dark outline to draw you eyes, and also to help the blue stand out more.

Though this quilt sort of gave me fits in the beginning, I love how it turned out.

And I got to use a cute blue polka dot flannel I'd had sitting around forever for the back.

And Hugh ended up liking it.

I've mentioned this before, but Hugh is the cutest baby on the planet. 

Just in case you didn't know.

Sofie and Hugh

Very talented sleepers.

Side Note: Our family has had a lot of fun making Pun jokes with Hugh's name. Here are the onesies made by the Jensen family (my sister Erin's family) for Christmas.

We are all so Punny. ;)

Neutral Colors for Sofie

Sofie is the Beauty who married my baby brother Ethan. 

She is a birth coach, a doula, studying midwifery.

You can find her here:

https://www.facebook.com/birthandpostpartum/?pnref=lhc

and here:

http://sofiejacobsen.com/

She's an exotic beauty with Colombian blood and that gorgeous olive skin tone that tans like I've never tanned and always wished I could.

She has great style, loves natural colors, and lovely textures. 

And so much more.

Sofie, Ethan and the cutest baby on the planet, Hugh.

 When they were preparing to get married, I wanted to make a quilt to say congrats. I found many different fabrics of neutral colors and mixed textures. Also wanted to give it a feminine touch with a rustic ruffle.

(Yeah...that white thread is bugging me too.)

 She graciously received it at her Bridal shower.

 As I write this, today is her Birthday! Happy Birthday, Sofie!

(June 10)

Scrappy Quilt for LuLu

This is Leah. Or Lu or Lulu. She's my littlest sister -10 years younger than me!

I drew her name for Christmas of 2016 and it was her turn for a quilt just for her. Key words: Just for her. She probably has the most quilts from me out of anyone since she keeps having babies (and those babies being born after my quilt learning.) In fact, she's got another one on the way, so she'll be getting yet another quilt soon. Again. :)

I think most of my siblings have been known to refer to Leah as the "best one."
She is the happy, easy-going, loving, patient sister -we all adore her!

Leah and Matt 

You'll rarely see Lu without a kid hugging her neck!

4 boys and another boy on the way.

Without any real idea for what kind of quilt I wanted to make for her, I just dove into my very colorful stash of scraps!

I poured through these for a while. 

Without really deciding on the quilt design...

I just started sewing, without really measuring too much, making large... strips of stripes? 

I have sort of stopped making quilts with any pattern. I am lazy in my old age. (42 is old when your baby sister is having her 5th kid!) I like 'em scrappy, and colorful and for the color to really stand out I use a lot of white. So ...This quilt is a very typical IVY quilt. 

1. Colorful

2. Simple to put together

3. Easy

The quilting is done on my normal machine, just close-together straight-ISH lines. 

I didn't bother trying super hard (or at all) to make them straight.

The strips (or stripes) aren't even necessarily the same width.

This quilt is a throw size.