ellie's nursery

While I was pregnant, most of my nesting instincts went straight into putting together a nursery for Ellie. I may have gone overboard, as I generally do, but it was such a fun way to keep busy during the final months of my pregnancy and collaborate with Matt. And even though in the first weeks of her life, we barely used this room and the daily concerns of caring for a newborn eclipsed all thoughts of cute decor, now that she's almost three months old I think she's actually beginning to notice and appreciate her surroundings. I so hope it will be a happy and cozy place for her to spend the first few years of her life.

The starting point for this nursery was the vintage curtains that Matt found at a consignment shop. They're actually identical to a set my grandmother had and I can remember sleeping on those sheets as a child. I couldn't resist them and they set the palette for the whole room--bright pops of coral, aqua, yellow, and spring green. This is actually the largest bedroom in our house, perhaps a little large for a nursery, but it adjoins our bedroom so it gives us easy access at night. It was already painted a lovely gray color, so at least we didn't have to repaint! The previous owners also used this room as a nursery and had painted the boarded-up fireplace with chalkboard paint for an improvised drawing space.

We tried to re-use and re-purpose as many things as we could, and the only new furniture we bought for the room was the crib, which we got at IKEA. The window seat (also from IKEA) was stolen from our sunroom. The pennant garland was from our wedding.

We re-purposed an old dresser from our guest room to use as a changing table and painted it a bright cheerful yellow. The turquoise ceramic knobs on the dresser came from Anthropologie.

We got the glider from the same consignment shop where we got the curtains. I recovered it in a nubby gray fabric with yellow piping. The tall dresser was inherited from my grandmother, and is the perfect size for tiny onesies and other pint-sized clothes. The wall art is a hodge podge of items, most notably the beautiful embroidered "E" made by Twin using the pattern in Alicia Paulson's Embroidery Companion and the fawn wall clock by DecoyLab (I saved up my pennies for that clock!). On top of the dresser, you can also see the beautiful keepsake box our friend Sara made for us to store all the little mementos of Ellie's childhood.

The beautiful gray wool blankie was made by my mother. It's the Brooklyn Tweed Shale Baby Blanket. I spent so many nights nursing and rocking Ellie with that warm blanket like a shawl over my shoulders. It really was like having a warm and reassuring snuggle from my own mama. Mom also made the blanket hanging from the Moses basket. It's inspired by the Hudson Bay blanket on the Purl Bee but done in our nursery colors. She used such a lovely soft wool that's been great for keeping Ellie warm this winter.

Ellie will have no shortage of little chairs when she starts toddling around.The rattan one and the straight wooden one are from my childhood, and the awesome yellow rocker is from Matt's. One of Matt's uncles got us the giraffe, who stands guard over the room very handsomely. Abby was terrified of the giraffe at first, but has now established a wary truce with it.

The cushion on the window seat has five dresden plates that I put together with fabrics from my stash. I'd never made dresden plates before--they are a lot of fun! I just appliqued them on with my sewing machine and did very minimal quilting. Not sure how practical the white fabric will be, but the cover does come off for washing (if I can pry it off--I always make my pillow covers too tight!).

Twin and I made the mobile using stuffed farm animals and veggies from IKEA. We just carefully hung each from embroidery thread and arranged them around two embroidery hoops. Ellie has just now (at about 10 weeks) begun noticing her mobile and she really does love looking up at it as she falls asleep. The crib is also guarded over by Shanna Murray's Lamb Family wall decal. And a peace sign, because our little girl is sure to have some hippie in her.

I got this little green lamp a couple years ago at an antiques store and rewired it myself (I had no idea rewiring a lamp was so easy!). I covered the shade with a scrap of Heather Ross's bicycle print. I don't know if that fabric is still in print, but I probably bought it about 7 years ago and have been hoarding it just in case I ever had a little girl. And now I do! I still have some in my stash, hopefully enough to make a little dress for her soon. The teddy bear I made a couple years ago from Hillary's book, more about it here. You may have also spied Space Boy and Olive, who now have a home in the nursery.
 

Just a few weeks before Ellie was born, we found the little scooter at an antiques shop downtown and we couldn't resist bringing it home. This teddy bear is from my own childhood, ready for a new generation of love.

I took all these pictures just before Ellie was born, and this one makes me laugh. It could be captioned "Ready and Waiting." We were all so ready to welcome that baby. The dogs didn't know exactly what they were in for, but they definitely knew something was up.

And we need a picture of the star of all this cute decor. Here's Ellie at 10 weeks!

Jennie's Wedding Quilt

I made Jennie a Single Girl quilt to celebrate her marriage.  That sounds a little odd (and Matt kept calling it a jinx!) but I just love the way it's a modern take on the traditional wedding ring pattern. A modern wedding quilt! Just what I wanted. This is by far the biggest quilt I've ever made--it's queen-sized at 85" x 92".

Almost a year ago, I started stashing away red fabrics for this quilt--the pattern calls for 36 different accent fabrics! Jennie's favorite color is red so I focused on red but ended up incorporating some red-oranges and yellows. It was surprisingly hard to find enough red fabrics I liked that were the right tone. I wanted to avoid purpley, dark reds so that it would stay on the very warm side of the red spectrum. I also wanted to keep away from too many pinks so that it wouldn't be girly--it is a wedding quilt so I wanted it to please the groom too!

I used Kona Coal for the background and I really like the way it sets off the circles. I chose it primarily because Jennie and Collin have two dark-haired cats but it also echoes their wedding colors. The bridesmaids all wore gray dresses and the flowers were bright red, pink, orange, and yellow. So it's very reminiscent of their wedding day.

Just the idea of wrestling this thing through my featherweight had me sweating so I sought professional help on the quilting and I am so glad I did! Suzan DeSerres of Singing Stitches in Chapel Hill did the quilting on a long-arm machine. She did an absolutely beautiful job and was such a pleasure to work with. We decided on a simple looping design that goes back and forth across the quilt. I LOVE it.

I found some cute percale sheets online to use for the back. I had read that quilting with high-thread count sheets can be a major headache, but these were 200-thread count which seemed to work just fine. It was nice to only have one seam to sew for the back!

The binding is made from two of the yellow fabrics I had leftover from piecing the front. 

Suzan used an 80/20 cotton/poly blend batting which makes it a versatile weight--light enough for use during the warmer months but still plenty hefty.

We actually ended up using the quilt as the backdrop of our ye olde photo booth at the wedding! Here are our friends Carl, Suzanne, and Kelli being all colonial at the reception. (The wedding was in Williamsburg, VA. It was AMAZING and everything turned out so beautifully!)

Jennie and Collin are just back from the honeymoon yesterday. I think this quilt will be part of a very happy home for many many years. XO

Matt's Gnome Quilt

Compared to last year, I definitely slacked on homemade Christmas gifts this year.  This quilt is the only gift I made, and I didn't even finish it until a few days after Christmas. Considering this quilt has been in the works for at least a year, Matt has been very patient. 

I had about a fat quarter of Heather Ross gnome fabric hoarded in the stash, so I fussy-cut each little gnome to live in the center of my log cabin squares. The other fabrics are a random assortment of prints. I was going for whimsical masculine, which kind of also describes Matt.
 

Twelve gnomes inside twelve squares. It's sized to be a lap quilt, about 50" x 60".
 

The back reminds me of the racing stripe on a sports car.

Around the time I was ready to quilt it, Alicia posted about her latest quilt. She used poofy wool batting and ties instead of quilting. Since the quilting step is my least favorite part anyway, I decided to follow her lead. I used green yarn to tie the quilt on each square and around the border. I also put one running line of hand-quilting along the ditch where the border meets the sashing (it's blue, look closely above).

I think the hand-quilting is a nice touch, and I do enjoy doing that kind of quilting. I mostly just don't like wrestling quilts through the sewing machine. Maybe I should add a long-arm quilting machine to my wishlist. You know, for when I win the lottery and have a sewing studio that is four times the size of my current one...

I did get a serger for Christmas, which is extremely exciting. Every time I sew a seam, I have to serge the raw edges. Even when it's not really necessary. Just because I can and it looks so dang cool. I have already made one very wonky t-shirt. Knits really are a whole different world.

Hoping to be back in this space more this spring. We have daffodils and quince and forsythia already. This has been the strangest winter. I'm totally cool with that. Let's move straight into spring!

hawaiian quilt

One of our dearest and oldest friends got married this summer in Hawaii. I wish that I could have made the trip, but I think Hawaii might be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, and I used up my once in a lifetime a few years ago when my parents cashed in all their frequent-flier miles and toted the whole family to Maui for a week. I remember thinking on the dreadfully long flight over there that it couldn't possibly be worth it. And then I stepped out of the airport and said, "oooooh. ahhhhh. yeah, this is totally worth it." It was an amazing trip.

So we didn't get to see Suzanne tie the knot in person, but we certainly wanted to celebrate her big day. And what better way to celebrate than with a bright, cheerful, hawaiian-inspired quilt. Jennie and I collaborated on this project and two twin heads is better than one. I love how it turned out.

 We used Denyse Schmidt's Proverbial Quilt pattern for the letters. Jennie and I each did two rows of words and I sneakily gave her the "HAWAII" row because the W involved about 10 pattern pieces and looked mighty tricky. She nailed it, of course.

We picked out the brightly-colored print fabric used in the border first and took all our color inspiration from that, ending up with a rainbow of jewel tones. After we'd pieced the letters, I remembered that I had started appliqueing a Hawaiian quilt motif years ago when we made our trip to Hawaii. I'd always intended it to be a pillow but I had never finished it. The green color worked perfectly with our quilt so we put it in the center. It was meant to be. I obviously started that applique project 4 years ago because Suzanne was destined to get married in Hawaii. Like tea leaves, the unfinished projects that litter my craft room predict the future.

Jennie did all of the quilting. I think I should have her do all of my quilting from now on. It's awesome. She did a large chevron pattern with machine-quilting around the outside, then hand-quilted the traditional Hawaiian pattern on the motif. I just had to look it up in my little book I bought in Hawaii--it is a breadfruit pattern. I love the mixture of the organic lines of the breadfruit with the geometric lines of the chevron. Killer.

I take full responsibility for the piecing of the back, which, frankly, just looks like a big old mess. I used leftover bits of the fabrics we used for the letters on the front, but just kind of sewed it all together willy-nilly. It definitely could have used a bit more planning, but it is bright and cheerful. And after all, it's just the back.

Suzanne's parents hosted a lovely reception at their house in VA a few weeks after the wedding, so we did get to party with the happy couple. On the car ride to VA, Jennie and I sat in the back seat and sewed the binding on the quilt while her fiance chauffeured us. Oh, haven't I mentioned here yet that Jennie is engaged? YUP. April 2012. We have a bajillion craft projects planned and our Mom is planning to make the cake. We talked her down from trying to cater the whole shindig one-handed. This should be fun.

squares within squares quilt

The baby quilt is fini, and sent off to Atlanta where it will help welcome a new little baby soon. Although it's for a baby boy, I didn't want it to be too "boy-y" so I went with a more gender-neutral yellow and turquoise color scheme. It's a mix of bold, bright patterns with a few more subtle ones, like the yellow stripe seersucker and the pale blue dot.

The square-within-a-square pattern was fun and quite simple to piece. I didn't realize until sewing all the strips together that because of the sashing there was not a single seam that had to be carefully lined up. Sweet! I had one stray block leftover, so I incorporated it into the back of the quilt.

I did a simple quilting pattern--just straight lines in one direction. I still don't trust my walking foot very much. I need to practice more.

Binding is always my favorite part of a quilt. (Is that weird? Am I the only one?) I love the actual task of binding by hand, and I love the look of the finished binding. A lovely way to finish a quilt project.

Sending wonderful happy thoughts for this new family of three!

ups and downs

I've been in a bit of a crafting rut the past couple weeks. Isn't it funny how that happens sometimes? Creative inspiration seems to dry up and a few failed projects snowball into a general feeling of frustration and inertia. I'm not sure which is the cause and which is the effect, but it is disheartening.

Last week I cut a simple shirt pattern out of a lovely voile, then decided to go off-pattern slightly and replace the gathers with pintucks. Sadly, the pintucks ended up completely off-center (curse you, math skills!). It looked like the pintucks were sliding sideways off my bust, rather than draping oh-so-elegantly across it. Then I cut the back piece too small. Then I couldn't figure out how to attach the straps. Then I threw the whole damn wad of fabric into the scraps bin. Phooey.

Small and simple projects seem to be the best cure for a crisis of crafting confidence. And it doesn't get much smaller or simpler than baby bibs. I used this pattern to make three infant-sized bibs for a friend who is expecting. They are so tiny!

I used a cotton print on the front and a soft flannel on the back. I added a little hippo applique to one. Done and done and couldn't be cuter.

And for another friend who is expecting (it's high baby season around these parts), I have a baby quilt underway. I love the methodical, repetitive process of piecing a quilt. It's almost like meditation. Most restorative for the crafting mojo.

Rather unrelated, but I got home from work today to find these three beautiful little bouquets sitting on the coffee table. All picked from the garden. Yeah, this husband, he's a keeper.

Happy weekend!

quilts given and received

Twin gave me a beautiful quilt as a wedding gift. It's now my faithful tv-watching sofa blanket--if I am on the sofa, chances are pretty good that I am under this quilt. It's the perfect size, and so pretty.
It's made mostly of Joel Dewberry fabrics. I love the mixture of floral prints and geometric ones. The best part is I can tell how carefully Twin picked out these fabrics with me in mind. They are the kind of colors and prints I love best, and she got it just right.
I love how the back is pieced with larger pieces of the different prints. I am always too lazy to piece the backs of quilts, but it's so worth the effort.
And this is a snowball quilt that I made for Matt's mom last Christmas. I'd never made a snowball quilt before, but it was a fun pattern to sew. It's one of those patterns where you get the visual impact of curved seams, without actually having to make any curved seams, because the octagons read as circles from a distance. I think to truly get a "snowball" effect, I should have made my squares smaller, but if you step back far enough, my snowballs do look pretty much round.

I used polka dot binding. I love binding, it's always my favorite part.

I'm about halfway through piecing the blocks for a new quilt for Matt. It features gnomes, and I am very excited about it. Am hoping to have it finished by Christmas, though I'm not sure it's going to happen. Luckily he has a birthday in February, so if I miss Christmas, I can just say that I was always intending it to be a birthday present anyway.

great-grandma's quilts

As we cleaned out my grandma's house a couple weeks ago, we found eight antique quilts that we assume my great-grandmother made. Many of them have become threadbare and stained, but I love them all.I found one in the linen closet, Dad brought down a box of them from the attic, and then we found three more in the basement. It was raining antique quilts, made by the hand of my great-grandmother! I was so freaking excited.These are definitely patchwork quilts--you can tell they were made with whatever fabrics she had on hand. A couple are quite complex, while others are simple patterns.I agonized about how to wash them, because after who knows how many years sitting in the attic, they certainly needed to be washed. I read online that the best way to clean vintage quilts is to vacuum them, which sounded a bit ridiculous, though I guess it would be a gentle way to air them out. I finally decided just to wash and dry them on delicate, and they don't appear to be too much the worse for the experience. They certainly smell a lot better.My next task is to mend them. I don't want to "ruin" their vintage authenticity, but I also want them to be attractive and useful for me and the rest of the family. Many of them have holes that need to be patched and I also plan to add new binding to the ones where the original binding has frayed almost to the point of nonexistence. Anyone know how to gently remove giant, decades-old stains from quilts? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I am at a bit of a loss. Thanks! There are more pictures over on flickr if you're interested in vintage quilts.

flying geese quilt

My new quilt. I think this is the first quilt I've ever made just for me. I've made several baby quilts as gifts, but it always seemed like too much effort to make a whole quilt just for myself. But there is really nothing cozier or prettier than a lap quilt for the sofa, and now I have one. It's a simple flying geese pattern that came together very easily. I loved mixing some traditional prints with a more modern color scheme. And the white just sets everything off so nicely.

It's hand-quilted, but I was lazy and only quilted in the ditch in one direction. I contemplated adding more quilting, but then I just wanted to have it done so I could cozy up with it on the couch.

I chose a dark gray cotton chambray for the backing, but I didn't have enough so I pieced a brilliant blue on each end. I likey. I think I got both of them at Purl and they are still selling the azure. (oh and they are from the "Carolina Chambray" collection. How fitting.)

Why is it that simple 1/4" binding makes such a visual impact on a quilt? I'm glad I went with one of the small prints in a dark color for the binding--it really adds so much.


And oh, the sun today! When I first woke up, it was absolutely pouring down rain, as it has been for about the past week. And then just as I was heading to work, the sun broke through. I walk through a beautiful old cemetery between the bus stop and my office on campus, and it's full of gnarled old trees and delicate dogwoods. It's a nice way to start my day, especially in spring.

Wishing you all a beautiful weekend!