A Quilt for Colin

Now that I have made a few baby quilts for friends with babies my boys are beginning to make noises about a quilt for someone in our house.  I have never made a full sized quilt.  I made a Dakota's bedding when he was little.  He's in the Navy now so that's been a while.  Last spring I pieced my first baby quilt in more than twenty years.  I have never made a full sized quilt. Here goes nothing, GULP!

I am starting with a jelly roll quilt for Colin. I LOVE precuts mostly because I hate the rotary cutter, or maybe it hates me.  I don't know which, but I do know have ruined a lot of fabric with a sudden slip of that thing.  I'm still learning, but I still have all my fingers, so I'm not doing too badly.

Once I found fabric Colin liked I started on a Pinterest frenzy looking for an idea that clicked.  A few hours/days/weeks later this is what I found as my inspiration.

It's the Cascade quilt pattern from Robert Kaufman Fabric.   I already have the fabric so I'm not ordering a kit.  It looks pretty straight forward though.  

The next step for me was to try and lay out the fabric to see if I was going to like it.  

I do not like the stripes.  DO. NOT. LIKE. Also those angled joins are going to give me fits, I just know it. On the other hand I am feeling much better about Colin's choice of blue for the contrast fabric.  His rational was blue is opposite of orange on the color wheel.  Pretty smart kid, it really works well.  I had been thinking black, which I now think would have been too harsh of a contrast. 

Quick note: the contrast fabric is the brighter blue under the lighter strips on the left of the picture.  The rest of what you are seeing is the back side of a quilt the boys have had since Colin was 3 or 4. It just happens to be very close in color to the background color so I am using it to play with layouts.  That also explains the blue and green triangles, they aren't part of the design, just part of an old dinosaur quilt.

Next try. More randomness, less stripes, no tricky angles. 

Better, so much better.  Not sure that I like the dark to light gradation though.

Attempt number three.  Getting tired of crawling around on the floor, so I hope this one works. 

This is my favorite so far.  I'll show this post to Colin tonight and see what he thinks.  I hope he picks this one.  Oh, and Colin?  I'm not sewing that top striped one.  No way, no how! 

Now I need to go remake the bed I stole the quilt from before the kids get home.  Let me know which one you like best and have a great day.

 

Playing with Half-Square Triangles

I am working on a new baby blanket. I love the fabrics, all bright colors and Eric Carle prints from the Very Hungry Caterpillar.  The half square triangles that are the basis of the quilt are fun to play with.  I ended up spending a good 45 minutes flipping them this way and that to see the different patterns formed by the white and the bright colors.  All the different patterns were made by simply rotating easy square where it lay.  None of the blocks have been switched or moved to a different spot.  It is amazing how different each variation looks.

My Original plan:

How about zig zags? I think Marshmallow approves.  Oh, if I haven't mentioned it before we adopted a pair of half grown street cat kittens. Meet Marshmallow, he is "helping" me this morning.

Stripes?  This one turned out to be my least favorite. 

Squares?  I think I am leaning toward this one right now.  Marshmallow approves.  David suggested this one last night and I didn't like it then, so if I choose this one I will hear about it. Sigh. 

The other kitten Orerow  jumped in to help Marshmallow check out the quilt pattern. After their "help" a few square may have been moved around. (About his name, there was a mix up the the vet papers and Oreo became Orerow.  Sounds like Scooby Doo trying to say Oreo.)

I like this pinwheel/hourglass pattern but I had such a hard time trying to lay it out that I think I will wait until I have a little more experience before trying this one.  In this pic you can see the coordinating fabrics.  The Hungry Caterpillar is the backing and the green numbers will be the edging. 

This is the last variation I tried.  I tried it two ways, one with a  white center and one with a dark center.  For some reason I like the dark center better. 

I can't seem to make up my mind which I like the best.  I may have to buy some more fabric and make more quilts just so I can try them all out.  Darn. 

New Hobby/Obsession

I have started working on the quilt squares I inherited. Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on the quilt design last week. I think I will alternate solid squares with the pieced squares in a checkerboard pattern. Whenever I have 5 minutes I try to sew a couple of pieces together. I am making progress, but it is slow. When my mother-in-law started piecing this quilt she did it all by hand. I decided that I would continue with what she started, all hand work, no machines, that would be cheating.

I have learned a few things:

1. I can't sew a straight line to save my life.

2. I am spending more time "unsewing" than actually sewing.

3. If I am lucky this quilt ought to be done by the time I am ninety.

4. Next quilt will be machine pieced.