Design Wall Monday: Baby Stuff

I've been a little quiet over here on the blog for the last few months, but I have been quilting! Mostly I've been making baby stuff because I know like a jillion pregnant people/new babies: me, my friend's sister, my labmate, another labmate's wife, a fellow MD/PhD student I TA with, 3 people I went to school with, and like 4 of my cousins.

I have to admit that my baby is taking quilt priority, I guess I'm being greedy... Seriously though, no remorse. So far, I have completed a blanket and matching carseat blanket for me, have made significant progress on some old WIPs (probably also for me, I mean baby...), finished one blanket to be gifted, started another carseat blanket to be gifted, remembered that I bought a baby sized quilt kit back in January when I first found out I was pregnant, pulled fabric for a baby sized Double Irish Chain, and started brainstorming ideas for appliqued onesies.

Here's what's on the Design Wall (or bed or table) these days:

Red Baby with leftovers from Red Wedding

Layout for a carseat quilt

Double Pinwheels (matches the carseat quilt)

Country Home, a very old WIP

Linking to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times

EDIT: I just discovered that this is my 100th post! Woo!

Red Wedding {Quilt}

Not at all like GoT Red Wedding, which I've heard the show did an excellent job portraying, this one is a quilt. I bought this kit like 2 years ago and finally mailed it off to the recipient this week, about a week and a half after their 1 year anniversary. Better late than never I guess. The pattern is Paris Flea Market Find in the Rhapsody in Reds collection from Connecting Threads.

Sorry, the lighting is a little weird in this pic

I was stalled for a long time at the flimsy stage with this quilt. First, it was because I didn't have enough floor space to baste a queen size quilt so I had to take it over to a friend's house. Then it was because I couldn't figure out how to quilt it. My original idea was to FMQ outlines of things that represented the couple in the 25 patch squares. This proved to be way beyond my skill set. The next plan was to echo quilt around the stars. This plan was foiled by giant quilt in tiny machine; it was impossible to turn. I ended up tracing each star and then doing an all over stars and loops pattern. In retrospect, I think going around the stars was a waste of effort because you really can't tell. This is the first quilt I've done where the quilting is not more obvious on the back. The variegated white to black thread I used gets completely lost in all the red.

A close-up

Overall I feel okay with this finish, but not really pleased, if that makes sense. I'm not 100% sure that this was my best effort. For the first time I really felt the limitations of my machine and wish I could afford some professional quilting now and again. At least those Shout color catchers did their job and it didn't bleed in the wash! Definitely something to be thankful for ^_^

Linking to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

An Old Finish

Back in like March I was asked to bind an antique quilt that was made and hand quilted by my friend's friend's grandmother. It is all hexagons and totally beautiful.

Those are not reproduction fabrics!

I was slightly nervous, but also really excited because I had never done a jagged edge binding before. It was pretty difficult because those hexies are like 1 inch per side so the binding is a little thick. I ended up sort of sewing the points in while doing the hand sewing part so that it would lay flatter. I am more or less satisfied with the result and the requester was overjoyed, so pretty much a success!

The binding color almost perfectly matches the center hexagons

This counts as a double old finish because I was done with the binding back in like early May. I'm going to blame the newest addition to my menagerie for the delay in posting. Say hello to Pancake!

Linking to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts