Recess quilt--check

The entire time I was working on this quilt, it was reminding me of my best friend. I think it was the ruler fabric that did it. Regardless, I decided that I will give it to her next time that I'm in town. I thought about waiting until Christmas, but I'd rather give her a present for no reason because everyone likes a present for no reason, right?

I quilted and bound it in a few hours yesterday. It's so fun & easy to quilt a small quilt. This one is only 36x60" so it just flew by. I took the time the baste, baste, baste and I got no crinkles on the back for the first time ever. I don't think I said one bad word--it's a miracle!

Mario and Luigi head to Utah

Thanks to the motivation of my roommate, I finally finished the Mario/Luigi quilt. It was supposed to be done for my nephew's birthday in February, but I got sick of the quilting and kind of gave up on it. My sister's family lives in Utah and it's often cold and snowy so I wanted it to be warm. It has 2 layers of batting, so it was SUPER fun to squish it all in to the machine. See how much I looooved it? Anyway, this weekend Stephanie was my cheerleader while I did the last bit of quilting and the binding. And now it's done and I'm so happy to send it to it's new home. It's somewhat of an awkward sized twin (45x90) but I think he'll like it. The front is old school pixelated Mario & Luigi, but the back has some new school Mario action. He's only 13 so I'm not even sure he's payed a NES Mario game. Kids these days are really missing out.

the end of freedom...

I start school again on Monday, so I've been trying to finish up some loose ends before I get busy beyond my wildest dreams.

Firstly, I worked on some blocks for round 4 of the lap quilt swap for maremare, gordongirl and 1boy1girl1kitty2. The first two are from Carol Doak's book, Simpy Sensational 9-Patch Stars and the other block was just improvised.





Then I finished putting together my quilt top from round 3 of the lap quilt swap. I'm SO glad to have this project semi-done. For the sashing, I pulled the greenish-yellow from the inside of the apples. I used scraps to make the cornerstones, which I've never done before and really like the look of. I'm working on putting together the pieced backing and will hopefully get around to quilting it some time in the next few months. I plan on taking it to my parent's house and putting it on my bed there, since it's a twin and the room is green.



So now I've crossed off two of the biggest projects of my list for the year already. Now, back to real life...

back with a tiny, tiny quilt.

I've been meaning to get back to blogging for MONTHS, but I've lacking motivation (and things to blog about!) Since the semester is rapidly coming to a close and Christmas is approaching equally as fast, I've been getting a lot of sewing done over the last few weeks.

Over the last two nights I made this doll quilt for my niece, Isabella. I love tiny patchwork and instant gratification, so this project was the perfect thing to keep me occupied between studying for finals. I plan on making a little doll (maybe a black apple doll) to go with it. I used an Aunt Grace charm pack for the patchwork, which is how I discovered that I hate sewing with fabric with pinked edges. Because I just couldn't match up the edges well enough, I trimmed the blocks down and made even tinier patchwork than I'd originally intended to.

Here is the finished product. It measures about 18"x16" and has a tiny 1/4" binding. After I'd done a bobbin's worth of quilting, I flipped over the quilt and realized that I had quilted over a big crease in the fabric. So I ripped it all out and re-did it. Again, I quilted a crease, but not as bad as the first time and there is absolutely no way I am fixing it. Sorry, Bella.

I am trying to get my free-motion confidence up before tackling a full sized quilt. Besides the giant creases on the backing, I think I can do it. Maybe if I basted, pinned or started from the middle like I'm supposed to things would be easier!