Sewing for baby - part 2

Continuing on yesterday's theme, here is another baby quilt I put together for Kari Bruck Photography.

I really wanted to use this sherbet palette - and this was the perfect excuse to use up more stash.

The design follows a friendship braid but is modified with the addition of 1" white sashing strips.  There is a great Moda bakeshop tutorial for the basic braid design here.

Here's a brief outline of how I put these blocks together.

 I cut 1 2.5" block to start and added a 1x2.5" strip of white sashing.

The rest of my patterened strips were 2.5" x 7"

and 1 x 7" for the sashing

Go ahead and chain piece all the 1" sashing strips to your 7" patterned strips to make the job go faster but only sew the sashing to one side of the block.

You'll only need a few 2.5" squares since they go only at the start of your blocks. I used 5 for this baby sized quilt.

Next sew the 7" patterned fabric piece to the 2.5" sashed square as shown.  White short sashing to unsashed long edge.

Then add the next right-angled piece as shown here - note that this time you are sewing the sashed edge to the previous pieces.

Keep going in this manner until the strip is the length you want it. Remember to keep alternating the unsashed edge and then the sashed edge when you sew.

When the strips are the length you want them to be, add a few more to allow for trimming and then stop and trim. Since this is a baby quilt, my 'blocks' were around 36" long when trimmed.

I added 1" sashing strips between my block sections and after sewing them together I trimmed everything up so it was nice and even. And there you have it! Fun and super easy to do.

 

Off to make another top... Happy Sewing!

Sewing for baby - sort of

OK peeps, don't get all excited  - there are no new babies around this house, but I have been making lots of baby quilts.

Why? Because my dear friend Kari, who recently left the great state of Oregon to move back to Iowa (I still haven't forgiven her for that), is a fantastic photographer and she needed some fun baby quilts as backdrops for her studio and her littlest clients.

I thought this would be a great opportunity to make those quilt designs that I probably don't need to have in my house, but really wanted to try out. And, oh yeah, it was supposed to be a stash buster.

First off is Amy's new Dancing Stars Quilt which is actually part of the Old Red Barn Co. Quilt-along on Flickr.  This pattern is free on Craftsy if you want to join in the fun.  The design is foundation pieced yielding 6.5" blocks of stars. The blocks are placed on-point to yield the final result.  So cute.

I chose a girly pastel palette composed largely of Tanya Whelan's Darla line and a few coordinates.  Top done - now I need to quilt and bind this baby.  Unfortunately, not that much of my stash was used up, I think I need to make more...

I'll show you the next quilt tomorrow.

If you live in the DesMoines IA area and are on the lookout for a great photographer, go check out Kari's Facebook page.  She is really very talented.
See?

Happy Sewing my friends!

where was I?

Well helloooo there.  Yes I have been neglecting this little blog haven't I? So sorry about that.  You see it's all about the Instagram effect. I have been posting lots over there and then I forget about my other venues.  Ooops.

So just a little catch up.  I spent the holidays knitting a.lot.  I always seem to rekindle that craft right when winter sets in.  I guess it's to be expected.

Here's a little peek of what I've been up to...

If you really want to see more, you can pop over to my Ravelry page.

Meanwhile, I have been sewing away on my SewSewModern Swap project.  There's a linky on the left sidebar if you want to see what this is all about.

This swap called for a large project - think intense, lots of time spent, etc. and then a smaller project.

Here is what I came up with.  Inspired entirely by my partners wishes. Here's the one 'big' thing:

 They don't know what they are getting yet, so I can't really say more. But I will say that I was thrilled to get this person as my swap partner. 'Kay enough about that, don't want to give anything away 'ya know.

This tote bag was designed by me entirely for my partner. So it's an original. Super easy pattern to put together. Not available at the moment but if you're interested in the pattern, let me know.

This bag is BIG.  Like 16"+ big  - so there is lots of room in there for your stuff.  I attached the handles in an offbeat kind of way to add some flare.  The side panels are chevron pieced for interest.
There's lots of zippery compartments for stashing things.

And here's one of the 'little' things. And there's some other stuff in there - my partner will just have to wait to see....



That's all for today folks! Happy Sewing!