Another UFO Finished

The last time I was in St. Louis for a quilt retreat I got by one of my favorite quilt shops, Janie Lou, and bought these great fabrics for a baby quilt.  Friends  of ours will be having their first grand baby this coming July, and since he's an engineer for Boeing I thought this line would be perfect.  

I decided to use the pattern "Colorblock" by Bijou Lovely.  

The backing turned out to be an interesting experience.  I used some of the leftover fabrics as I often do, along with the white..... 

.....but when I laid it out to baste it, I discovered that for some reason, the backing was too small.  Drat!  Have you noticed that fabric is not as wide as it used to be?  You could always count on it being 44/45" wide, and now you're lucky if it's 42" wide.  I think I was using the 44" number when I was figuring out how to cut the backing.

Seems like I've been ripping out a lot of stitching lately.  

This is what we quilters call a "design opportunity."  Back to the drawing board, or I guess I should say back to the design wall.  I actually like this one much better.

I set out to quilt it by hand and had a terrible time needling through that white fabric.  In the areas where I would have to quilt through two layers of the white fabric I just machine quilted instead.  This is the first quilt on which I have ever combined hand quilting and machine quilting.

Anyway, the quilt is done and ready for baby.  This may be the earliest I have ever had a baby quilt ready!

Quilts for Savannah and Sahara

When I was in St. Louis last summer I made it a priority to stop by one of my favorite quilt shops, Janie Lou to buy something.   I chose this book by Camille Roskelley and some great fabrics (Storybook by Moda) for twin baby quilts.  We had twin great-nieces coming in October, and I wanted to be ready.

Even though the pattern has Flying Geese blocks, which I really hate making, it was a fun pattern with which to work.  These components.....

.....turned into this block.....

.....and the blocks turned into these quilts. 

Most of the time I hand-quilt baby quilts.  

This time I waited too long to get started, and I really didn't think about how much quilting there would be.  By the time I finished quilting them my fingers were really, really sore.  I will spare you that picture!

My sweet friend, Penny, made these beautiful embroidered labels for me.

I had trimmed the corners off the Flying Geese blocks.....

.....so I ended up with enough Half-Square Triangles to make a couple more baby quilts.  These are just the blocks from the peach quilt.  I also have the turquoise blocks to use.

Don't these precious babies look like they need to be covered up with some nice warm quilts?

I was so happy to have the opportunity to take the quilts to them in person.  SO much more fun than mailing them!