Monday, July 18, 2011

a start and a finish

First of all, I need to let you know that there is a giveaway going on at Our Busy Little Bunch


Isn't that the cutest fabric!?!?!?

Now...  I have finished lil' monkey's quilt top.  I am waiting on the backing fabric to come in to see if I will be able to roll it up and put it through my machine. (fingers crossed)!!!  The top is 66" x 77".  He has a full size captain's bed, so the quilt did not have to be long at all.  I just need it to tuck down on the sides about 3 or 4 inches.  I am very pleased with how it has turned out so far.


Here is the backing fabric that I am going to use.  I am probably going to piece the back with some solid red and maybe some of the other bright colors found in this fabric.

I am ready to start my next two projects as well.  Unfortunately, one of the baby quilts will you use the monkey left overs, so you will be seeing some more of those cute faces.  The other baby quilt in the works is for my brother in laws family.  I will be using Riley Blake's Sugar n Spice in the pink and green.  You can find the tutorial here  and some examples of the quilt below.



This is actually the first quilt that I made!!!




I made the same quilt for a coworker of mine.  Isn't Maci sweet!!!

I will show progress of all the quilt projects in the near future.  Wish me luck!!!
Lindsay

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Giveaway at Happy Quilting

Melissa at Happy Quilting is giving away a fat quarter bundle of Kate Spain's Flurry!!!  I love the idea of starting on a Christmas quilt!  Go check out the giveaway here.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Progress!!!

I have made some progress.  It is slow going because I can only work on this quilt after lil' monkey is in bed.  I have 30 blocks completely put together.  All I have to do is square them to 11.5 inches.  

This quilt is already making my life a little difficult.  I originally bought a pattern that was going to require 99 blocks to make the top, so I thought that I would use a little math and adjust the pattern to better suit my needs.  I worked the numbers so that the quilt would use (30) 12 inch finished blocks.  Well, lets just say that my math must be a little rusty because my blocks, when squared, are 11.5 inches and will finish at 11 inches square.  No biggie though.  I am still in love with this quilt.  I am going to need to make 12 more blocks to finish.  Here are a few photos of the progress (excuse the photo quality, as it is night time at my house) :)

Here are the cut pieces laid out on my bed.  I am a little OCD and needed to make sure that all the prints were distributed evenly before sewing together!
(excuse the messy side table crap.  It's clean now.  Geeze, the things you see in pictures after you've already taken them!!!)



Here is where I stand tonight.  I have 10 blocks squared up with 20 more to go.  Then, when the rest of my fabric comes in, I will finish the last 12 blocks.



This is one of my favorite blocks so far!!! 

Hopefully I will have more progress to share in the next day or two.  Thanks for listening to me ramble :)

Lindsay

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Here goes nothing!!!!

I am excited to be starting a blog! (and scared, nervous, and terrified) ;)  I am fairly new to quilting but I have fallen in love with it.  I made my first quilt about two years ago.  It was a rag quilt that I made for my little sister.  I wanted to quilt but was intimidated by the idea of quilting and binding, so I opted for simplicity of the rag quilt.  I have grown so much since then, and I am pleased to say that I am not afraid to quilt and bind anymore!  Since I am starting this blog to share, I thought I might start by showing you all my current project.  It's a secret, so if you know my little one, don't tell him!!!  My lil' monkey was watching me "window shop" fabric on the internet one night and he saw this fabric.  He said, "I want a monkey blanket"!!!  I got a huge smile because I love this fabric.  His birthday is in September, so I decided the perfect gift would be a quilt from mom.  
 Moda's 5 Funky Monkeys fat quarter bundle from the FatQuarter shop.


I had to start cutting them last night.  I just couldn't wait any longer!!!

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This is the pattern that I am using.  You can find it here at Cluck Cluck Sew.  I purchased the PDF format.  I am going to have to alter the pattern a little.  Once I printed the pattern, I realized that it was going to take 99 blocks to make the top of monkey's quilt, not counting the borders.  I altered the sizing so that the top has 30 blocks before adding the borders.

I will keep you posted on my progress.  I am thinking (hoping) that this quilt goes together quickly.  Wish me luck.

Lindsay