Baby quilts are the best!

Finish!  "Rocky Mountain Love" to celebrate the birth of Owen, first born to our dear friend of the family, Cara K., who lives in Colorado.  Soft baby colors, and shapes reminiscent of mountains.

Soft stipple quilting with a simple binding.

Always add a label to your quilts! 

Packed, and on its way to meet little Owen.  Sweet dreams, Owen! 

More catch-up - Emily and Matt's baby shower, Ella's Tulip Garden quilt

We hosted a baby shower for our daughter, Emily, and her husband, Matt back in January.  We had fun decorating the house with some special family mementos, and fun shower decorations like the flag bunting. 

The quilt on the wall was made by my grandmother for my parents' wedding in 1944.  I thought the colors suited the baby shower theme.  The high chair in the background was used by me, my mom, and my grandmother!

Cutest cake ever!  Not only cute, but delish! White cake with lemon filling, and buttercream icing. (from Kirsten's Danish Bakery)

These are antique baby clothes I have. The beige one in the center was my mom's, so that dress is 100 years old! The picture in the foreground shows my mom wearing the dress. 

My lovely daughters!  Emily, Hannah, and Genevieve.  My heart is so full!

Mom and daughter.

Ella's Tulips - I had lots of fun making this.  

It looks so cute in their nursery!

Beautifully machine quilted by Sue Pawlowski.  

Baby Ella!  Born February 12, 2018. 

Ella and granddad sharing stories.  I have a feeling they will be great friends. :)

Playing catch-up - Gen and Dave's Baby Shower, Liliana's Southwest Dreams Baby Quilt

Wow, we have been living life on "fast forward" lately!  In the course of about 6 months, our family has experienced or will experience:  3 showers; 2 births: and a wedding.  Very busy, but it's all good.  We are so blessed!

This quilt is Liliana's Southwest Dreams, modeled by Liliana herself.  More on this later. 

Genevieve and Dave at their baby shower back in November. We had a nice big group of family and friends, gathered to celebrate the upcoming birth of their little girl.  

Sister moms-to-be! Genevieve on the left, Emily on the right.  My lovely daughters!  (both have since delivered, Genevieve had Liliana Noelle on Christmas morning, and Emily welcomed Ella Karen on February 12)

Emily, her husband Matt, Danny (Hannah's fiance), and Hannah. You can see the nice bright space we rented at our park district rec center. 

Love this clever gift from one of Genevieve's good friends!

The two grandmas-to-be, and shower planners, Annette and myself!  We had fun working on this together!

The rowdy table (every party has one!):  our good friends, Diane, Paul, Andrew, Molly, Cindy, and Bill. 

This stole the show!  Scott made this "watermelon baby" himself! (modeled after many found on pinterest)  I think he did an AMAZING job!

This was some of my inspiration for Genevieve's baby quilt.  She wanted something with a southwest theme, and I love this squash blossom quilt block design.  Found this quilt on pinterest, sorry I don't know the source.  I did a LOT of searching for ideas, and went through several design choices before settling on this one.  I even started sewing one of the other options, but was not happy until I found this.

Quilt in progress.  I love the off center feeling of this quilt.  

Genevieve asked me to design the quilt color scheme around this framed artwork, but with a southwest theme.

Finished quilt and Lily.  Machine quilted perfectly by Sue Pawlowski.

Hello Lily!

And back to sleep.

I LOVE how Genevieve posed Lily for this photo!  

Sweet dreams, Lily!

Sunset Inspiration

Back in September of 2011, my nephew got married in a "destination wedding" at the Outer Banks, N.C. Although the day started with hints of a few clouds, and perhaps rain, it cleared up and produced the most amazing sunset.  The rainbow colors were something out of a picture postcard.

Miranda's dad created the wedding arch out of some old wood, accented with fish netting and seashells.  We all gathered on the beach for a special ceremony, for a special couple.  

Although this photo is not from the wedding day, it echoes the same purples, oranges, and pinks we saw that night.  This was from their wedding website, and I used it as a "map" to create a wedding quilt keepsake gift for them.  First step, shopping for some gorgeous batiks! (never a bad idea)

Sorry I don't have a better photo of the finished quilt! I asked Nathan to send me a picture of the quilt hanging in their house...I will post it when I receive it.  I simply cut rectangles and pieced in a bricks pattern.  Quilting was done in organic horizontal lines, in various thread colors.

Quilting detail.

I do like the look of parallel lines quilting, but it is quite time consuming! I was so pleased that Nathan and Miranda were happy with the outcome.  Pretty memento to a their beautiful wedding.

Butterfly Galaxy!

Butterfly Galaxy belongs to my daughter, Genevieve - here she is, showing it off over the railing at her cute apartment.  Gen requested blue, purple and gray as a color scheme, so I started collecting fabrics.  I had seen a similar quilt on pinterest (see below, sorry I know little about its maker or origin):

Inspiration! Nice large pieces of gorgeous Kaffe Fassett fabrics, with narrow sashing and tiny cornerstones.  I bought various types of fabrics, and in different cities, also used some from my stash.  Gen helped with the block arrangement, which she thoroughly enjoyed.

I arranged the blocks on my design wall, auditioning my feature fabric as a possible sashing, and hoping to use the blue cotton lawn bird print as the edge/setting triangles.

Feature fabric (Gen named the quilt Butterfly Galaxy after seeing this fabric).  Initially, I planned to used the aqua flying geese "stripes" as the piping (fussy cut) but it was too intense.  I cross-cut strips instead, and the appearance was more fun and random.

Blocks with sashing inserted.

Blocks sewn into diagonal strips, marked and ready for assembly.

After the stunning machine quilting by Sue Pawlowski, I like to add a piping before the binding.  You can see the gorgeous feather quilting by Sue on that pretty cotton lawn.

Finished join seam of the binding.  I leave long pieces at the beginning and end of the binding application, so I can sew them together rather than overlap them. 

Close-up of the quilting, and the binding and piping.

Quilt at home in Gen's apartment.

I think that Buddy approves!

The best part? Genevieve loves it! 

Baby Dresden Finished!

Baby quilt finished!  This was truly a labor of love, using special antique blocks to create this quilt for baby Brecken.  See my previous post here for the back story.  

After assembling the quilt, and machine quilting it, I machine washed and dried it.  Love that soft, crinkled appearance and feel!  Plus, this quilt will be used, so I wanted to make sure it would hold up to machine washing!

This is the absolutely adorable nursery where this quilt will live.  Don't you love it? Cara, the mom, did all of the decorating herself.  How talented is she!  

And here he is! Baby Brecken, one day old, with his special mama!  Can't wait to meet this little man in person!

Baby Dresden quilt finished!