Autumn Has Arrived

I have not blogged since, egads, September 12!  I had one post in draft form the last weekend in September but then got distracted- and for good cause.  I flew out to my daughter and son-in-law's home in Oklahoma to await and be present at the birth of my first granddaughter.  She arrived 10-11-12 (after a 30+ hour labor) and her proud parents named her Autumn. She is just 2 hours old in the below photo weighing in at 7 lb 4 oz.  Just look at those wide open eyes and that head of hair!

Autumn has been the reason over the last months for my obsession with baby quilts, baby knitted socks, baby crocheted hats and sweater, and flannel baby burpcloths.  Here are finished pix of three quilts I made for her.  Smallest and my first FMQ'd attempt was "Strawberries and Chocolate" shown here in full view and posed on by Autumn for the photo.

Second to be finished and FMQ'd was "Duck and Cover", shown first in full view and then with Autumn and both her grandmas.  Autumn is only a few days old here.

The third quilt to be finished- and just barely the day before I left for the airport- was "Little Witch Girl", shown in full view here, though a bit shadowed, in my backyard.

Here are all three quilts spread over the laps of me and my husband with little Autumn nestled beneath.  She will have to grow into those quilts.  I sure hope they get dragged around and become threadbare!

Oh, and by the way, Autumn's mom, my daughter also made her a quilt called Trick or Treat seen here, a Star Wars quilted wall hanging seen here, and a Winnie the Pooh quilt for the Pooh themed nursery, seen here.  In true quilter fashion, the final stitches of the binding of the Winnie the Pooh were put in the night before my daughter went into labor.  And lest we forget, my daughter's quilt guild also made Autumn an adorable modern/owl quilt shown here.

Here is the Box of Sox I completed- seven pair in all accompanied by suitable reading material, of course! I was bemused that one of my daughter's favorite outfits for Autumn has lady bugs.  This was unbeknownst to me when I packaged the socks.  I guess mother and daughter have similar tastes.  Hmmm... I wonder how Autumn will fit into this picture and what she will think about all this as she gets older.

Be sure to check out my New Project with modified poem excerpt below. But, to meet the rules of linking up to WIP Wednesday, I can still cite two quilts as my "Works In Progress".  My Doll Quilt just needs the binding put on and my Grinch Quilt is just itching to come down off that design wall and be assembled- maybe even in time for Christmas this year. 

Completed projects:  

1. "Strawberries and Chocolate"
2. "Duck and Cover"
3. "Little Witch Girl"
4. Final of seven pairs of baby socks

Ongoing projects:  

1. Doll quilt - still awaiting binding after baby projects reach a lull
2. Grinch quilt - still on design wall for assembly and creative sashing solution
3. Catching up on my quilt blogging- I have draft entries that will be chronologically out of synch when I do post them but so what

New projects:  

1. Traveling to Oklahoma to rock my granddaughter

          Cleaning and scrubbing (and quilting) can wait til tomorrow
          For babies grow up we learn to our sorrow
          So quiet down cob webs, unfinished bindings go to sleep          
          I'm rocking my grandbaby, and grandbabies don't keep*

*I modified this final verse of a poem. I never knew there was more to it.  The complete poem is here.

This month's stats:

     Completed  projects - FOUR!

     New projects - rocking my new granddaughter, Autumn

     Currently in progress - 3

     Those in closet - many enumerated in earlier posts and not repeated here 

 

On a Roll with Duck and Cover

I finished FMQ on Strawberries and Chocolate.  All that is left is to wash it and it is all ready for the baby. I took some photos tonight but they are really dark and dingy looking.  The pinks are really more lively and crisp that the photos would leave you to believe. I will need to take some daylight photos and post in another blog entry.

When my kids were born 26-32 years ago there was no pretense of knowing the sex so most items were gender neutral.   I would not have sewn a pink quilt- blue maybe, but certainly not pink-  until after the baby's arrival.  Someone in my chorus group told me how her grandson was supposed to be a girl and there was a surprise in the delivery room.   If that is the case for my daughter, this baby is going to have a lot of wrong-gender-specific handmade items!  I bought into this girl thing hook, line, and sinker.  The little witch girl quilt that is in line for quilting is pretty girlish, too.

But at least the strip quilt, Duck and Cover, my latest FMQ in progress, can be for either sex.  So far I have done my stitch in the ditch between the strips.

I have also decided and quilted an echo pattern around each large bird in the dark-blue-with-ducks-and-geese strips...

 a channel type straight line pattern in the yellow-with-words strips...

and a saw tooth triangular pattern in the orange-with-egg-yolks strips.

Quilting around each of the  tiny-sized ducks and geese was a challenge. They sure are not perfect but they certainly helped to develop my FMQ fabric manipulations and steering skills. You can still see a fabric markings in the orange strips since I have not washed the quilt yet. I learned my lesson with Strawberries and Chocolate. Even if the fabric has a set pattern, in the heat of the quilting moment, going forwards and backwards and sideways, you can't always tell or remember which line you were following. This time I marked them!  More and more often I managed to sew right on them, too.

Yet to do are the turquoise strips with polka dots and the white strips with diagonal ducks. I think dots will get meandering and ducks will get honeycomb pattern- not around every duck, goodness knows, but perhaps around every grouping of four or nine.


Here are my stats for this week.  After that I will link up to WIP Wednesday so I can "gander" at everybody else's work and leave comments.

Completed projects:  

1. Strawberries and Chocolate Quilt! (picture to follow)

Ongoing projects:  

1. "Duck and Cover" - have about half FMQ'd
2. Autumn Baby Quilt - make binding and spray baste this weekend 
3. Doll quilt - still awaiting binding after baby projects reach a lull
4. Seventh pair of baby socks- I want a week's worth

This week's stats:

     Completed  projects - Strawberries and Chocolate

     New projects - baby socks 

     Currently in progress - still 4

     Those in closet - many enumerated in earlier posts and not repeated here 

Duck, Duck, Goose and Finished Heartstrings

Yee, gads!  I was amazed to see that it has been three weeks since I posted.  We were in Disneyland and Legoland from Thursday May 3rd through Tuesday May 8th so I guess my excuses for the Wednesday before and the Wednesday after is packing for and recovering from the trip. Disneyland and Legoland were fun.  It was particularly rewarding to see my son get into the Duplo building.  He is a special needs adult who turns 26 this month and this was his birthday trip.

Immediately after returning, I placed the binding on the heartstrings quilt for my grand-niece and mailed it off.  Again Mary Ann did an awesome job with the quilting of it- my photos do not do her quilting skills justice.  Be sure to check out her blog for some other photos.  She put in extra effort to get it to me soon so I could bind it for the baby due May 6th so "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mary Ann".  Carmen  thanks you, too. You can see it in her wee smile here, just one day old. 

I love the curliques in the swirly pink fabric and the loopy hearts within the peeled back hearts.

I did get to do some sewing on Mothers' Day.  I have had the fabric in a kit for a strip quilt that I bought 2-3 years ago in Oklahoma.  Here are the fabrics.

The strips were pre-cut in the kit and all I needed to do was decide on a pleasing arrangement and sew them together, which I have did in less than two hours- the sewing part, that is.  The "arranging in a pleasing order" took a few days of trial and indecision and gazing upon my design wall before committing.  I have found a great use for my iPad.  I snap a picture on the design wall and then display the iPad in its stand on my sewing machine counter top surface to remind of the order, lest a hefty breeze whisk my hard thought-out option off the design wall.  I plan to quilt this one myself and am considering a different stitching pattern for each strip. Maybe I will use a diamond shaped grid on the orange fabric with the egg yolks, maybe a square grid on the blue dotted fabric.  I think I will just put some squiggles quasi-echoing the blue background ducks and geese, both the big and small versions.  Perhaps the yellow Duck, Duck, Goose will just be channel quilted horizontally and perhaps some stippling on the white close-packed ducks fabric.  I hope all this is not too ambitious for me since I am just beginning to free motion quilt. The binding will be a mini-stripe of white, yellow, blue and orange and the backing will be a  white/orange small (but not mini) print.  I have no pix of those yet but will show them with the assembled quilt in a later post.

Completed projects:

1. Pink/lilac/green heartstrings baby quilt - bound, signed and mailed
2. Second IKEA cabinet assembled and ready to be loaded with fat quarters

Ongoing projects:

1. Duck, duck, goose, strip pieced
2. Doll quilt - with free-motion quilter
3. Chicken quilt -  spray baste 505 purchased online from Amazon arrived, will try myself to do free-motion quilting on this quilt

No progress (but re-listed here so I do not forget and leave buried in closet):

• Hexagon Mask Quilt - layout begun but overwhelming
• Fire and Ice Quilt- sitting in closet awaiting decision on backing
• Grinch Quilt - ripening on the design wall
• Pumpkin/Iris/Blossom square wall hanging- needs backing and binding

I want to start:

• Bug baby quilt- more on this later
• Presents with Bows quilt kit
• The Ghastlies- strip quilt

This week's stats:

     Completed  projects - 2 

     New projects - 1 

     Currently in progress - 3