Celine's baby quilt bound and off to its new forever home!

After a lot of frustrating moments and a lot of picking I love how this turned out. 

2016 Goals

My goals for 2016 are:

1.   To make and finish 30 quilty things including:

      -  12 bed sized or large lap quilts (> 50x60")

      -  finishing the quilts left over from 2015

      -  one made with paper piecing

      -  make a combo of beautiful utility quilts and art quilts 

2.  To increase my blogs professional appearance with

      -  better quality photographs

      -  better design of photographs

      -  blog more than once a month 

      -  better narrative

3.   To be more involved with the quilting community

      -  to go to another quilt retreat or two

      -  to build healthy relationships in the quilting world

   

Comparison of 2015 goals to actual progress.

Comparison of 2015 goals to actual progress: 

Last year I committed to making 12 bed/lap quilts practicing different techniques.  Counting children's quilts I met the first part of that goal.  

While I met that goal I really wanted to explore more techniques than I did and finish more bed quilts.  At the end of the year I had four ready to quilt but took advantage of spending time with family instead of rushing to finish. I have 6 or 7 more in various stages of piecing.  That being said I wanted to produce 25 quilty pieces and finished 23... Not bad!  

Included in that number and shown above is a little (36") cat wall hanging. The background is a feeble attempt at a Ricky Tim conversion quilt using two pieces of my hand dyed fabric.  I also stole the cat shape idea from Hilary Florence's "nine lives".  Love the final piece..whimsical and fun. I used the same fabric to make the table runner below.  

Along with quilting for myself I continued to do some quilting for charities and others (not all shown) and hand dying. 

For some reason I seem to have given away finished quilts before taking pictures of them bound... So, I guess that's a great first goal for 2016. Remember to take better pictures (with a better camera) and set up to showcase the quilt  :-) .   

Stay tuned for 2016 goals

Baby quilt for Celine

All done but the binding (iPad photos).  I think I have a love hate relationship with this little quilt.  I had so much trouble with tension and had to pick out too much for my liking.  I also purposely forced myself to use a verregated thread (pale green) which showed my errors.  I did this on purpose to push my limits.  Still lots of learning but I like the design concept and will use it again...with matching thread. :-)

Cleaning up some scraps

Sometimes you just need to get your head out of the big projects and pick up some quick wins (seems I need this more often than not these days).  I had made some little receiving blankets and wondered if it would work on slightly larger projects with a quilted top. 

On Saturday I was down on the floor sorting my stash into colour lots when I thought I might be able to put something together for a friend's little boy.  I had lots of green and brown flannels and a great piece of plush backing.   Here is what I came up with.  I made it with a self binding backing (thanks Missouri Star Quilt Co!) .  Once again the picture is not great but the colours are fairly true.   It's not big but a great baby size. 

United Way

I thought I would do some little gifts for auctioning at the United Way telethon this year.  Nothing fancy -just some cuddlies.  Well finally got busy and got them done.  ( Sorry for the terrible pictures. One of these days I will have to start using my camera to get better quality photos. )

The comforter is for baby and measures approximately 40 x 55.  It has a fuzzy soft back and poly batting.  The top is a beautiful green silky material to which I added little black bows.   All washable.  

And I added a couple receiving blankets as well. 

Herringbone Quilts for twins

I finally finished the two little herringbone quilts that I did for newborn twins.  The quilts are kid size and not baby size, measuring approximately 56x62 each. The red,blue, and yellow one has 80:20 cotton batting. The other is poly.  I quilted one with nylon thread and the other with a variegated King Tut. 

I purposely quilted them differently to see what the difference was in feel and look. Although I am partial to heavy quilting, I like them both.  They are different.  Here you can see the difference! 

Here is one with binding I chose for both. 

And I forgot to take a picture of the two with binding.. Don't look too close or you will see I missed a piece that I had to go back and fix. 😒

The back is this great fuzzy fleece backing. 

Better pictures to come!