Our really early advent calendar

No, this advent calendar isn't three months late. It's nine months early! At least that's how I'm choosing to look at it. I started it a week before Thanksgiving, but with three kids under the age of four and an old sewing machine that did *not* like machine applique, I didn't finish the binding until last night. Oh, well. My machine and I are back on speaking terms after a little visit to the repair shop. And the advent calendar is completed in plenty of time for next Christmas :)I'm sorry for the not-so-fabulous pictures - our weather today is not-so-fabulous. I used Oh, Fransson's tutorial on Sew Mama Sew with Kate Spain's 12 Days of Christmas and Kona Cardinal, Azure, and Peridot. And I love it and am relieved it's done. My oldest has already picked out his favorite pockets for Santa to leave him candy (#3 because it's blue, #4 because that's how old he is now, and #11 because it has Santa on it). Now on to the next project!

Enjoy all the other lovelies at Sew & Tell Friday!

Aaliyah's Quilt

Another friend with an upcoming arrival, another baby quilt :) Dad is currently deployed, leaving Mom with a sixteen-month-old and the new baby, who should be making her appearance any day now. I used Amanda Jean's Fair and Square pattern, with a few adjustments. I centered the offset rows (way too OCD to handle them not being centered) and made it smaller for a baby quilt (squares finishing at 5", sashing at 2", top and bottom at 3"). I like how bright and cheerful it turned out, and hopefully the new baby will like it as well!Love the one red duck :)
Go check out all the other lovelies at Sew & Tell Fridays!

Tallen's Quilt

A little over a year ago, I made this quilt for a newly-arrived friend's newborn daughter. Well, last spring, she and her husband found out a surprise was on its way - another baby! When I told her that I was going to make her a quilt for this baby, she immediately put in a request for this quilt. Since figuring out patterns and fabric is a huge chunk of the work for me when making baby quilts, she made my life a little easier. So, here's the new quilt!I love the colors in this quilt - the blues and greens are a little funky.I also love that with all the geometric shapes, colors, and animals, this is definitely a boy's quilt.In fact, I love it so much that when I cut out the fabric for this quilt, I went ahead and cut enough to make another one for our new little one!Thanks for visiting, and enjoy looking at all the other lovely quilts at the Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Also, go check out all the other finishes this week at Sew and Tell Friday!

Braylin's Quilt

I finished this quilt two months while we were at the beach, but I'm a bit behind on blogging and it took me awhile to gift it. Anyway, this quilt was for one of my friends who almost two weeks ago had a baby girl, Braylin (the quilt arrived before the baby). This was a really simple, quick quilt to put together, and my inspiration was this quilt. I love how cute and girly it turned out - just like my friend! I hope Braylin enjoys her new quilt :)

Tracy's quilt

While we were at the beach, I finished up a quilt for my friend Tracy's soon-to-be-arriving little boy. I used the same line of fabric from this quilt I made last fall. It was a fairly simple quilt to put together. I used this tutorial, with just a few modifications. I used a 5" square for the center block, and adjusted the surrounding rectangles to 2.5x5" and 2.5x9" for a finished 8 1/2" block. It was fun taking pictures at the beach instead of my backyard (especially given the nautical nature of the fabric), though I'm sure the other folks on the beach thought I was crazy! I'm really happy with how this one turned out, and I'm excited to start up the next one!

Abigail's quilt

My sister-in-law Jennie and her husband Josh had a baby girl named Abigail on August 1st. I decided to play around with half-square triangles for her quilt. Those buggers are a beast. It took almost two days after completing the squares to figure out what to do with them. I tried out I can't remember how many different layouts before finally settling on this one. And since I'm a little bit of a lazy quilter and don't iron my seams open, the corners where all the triangle points converge are fairly unwieldy. Lessons learned. I do like how the diagonal, horizontal, and vertical quilting came out, though. At least that was a success. Jennie seemed happy with the quilt, and in the end, I'm happy with how it turned out as well. And I have now learned my lesson about triangles and pressing seams :)

Whew...

I recently finished up two more quilts! These were for newborn twins that Chad's brother and sister-in-law recently adopted. I wanted to make them each their own quilt, but yet keep them similar as a nod to them being twins. So, I used the same fabric but with a different pattern for each.

Some quilts go together really quickly and fabulously, like this one. I'll be using this pattern again for sure. I love how it highlights the fabric, and this combo is one of my favorites. Of my next four quilts, I think fully half of them will be using this fabric. I also branched out with my quilting and went on the diagonal this time. I'm happy with the results. All in all, one of my favorite quilts to date.This quilt, on the other hand, was much more of a learning process. I used a disappearing nine patch pattern, but the way I used it was not so error-friendly. I also didn't baste quite as I should have, so the quilting pulled the fabric, leading to some unintended wonkiness. Oh, well. I still like this quilt, but would use the pattern differently next time.The recipients haven't sent back either quilt, so hopefully they and the new little ones will enjoy them. Now onto the binding of two more quilts, maybe before Monday? And off to the doctor today for my pre-surgery appointment! Yea!