Aviary Love

My cousin & his wife welcomed their first baby into the world this month! They found out ahead of time that she was a girl, and I made her quilt as soon as I found out! My aunt flew out [to Halifax] to visit them on the weekend, so by now, I hope that baby Dylan is already using her new quilt!
I used Dewberry's Aviary 2 line to make it. I have since bought more of these fabrics so I can make up something else with them - I HEART them! I have never loved the colour purple as much as I do when I look at this collection. In my mind, it was perfect for a little girl's first quilt, but without knowing the Mommy's tastes very well, you just never know. So, I did some recon & found out her favourite colours are purple & green - perfect!



I hope they love it & Dylan uses it for many years to come. :)

Happy Birthday Amber

Dear Amber,
Today I donated a quilt (this one) to the Owen Sound Hospital. It will go to a little girl who is born on your birthday and finds herself in the NICU. A little fighter.

Miss you,
Love you,

The Little Sister Quilt

Rachel is my 9 year old neighbour. She already has an interest in sewing & even has her own little sewing machine! When her mom was expecting, we decided to make a quilt for her new little sister.
Rachel picked out the fabrics and waited impatiently with me for them to arrive! (It's sooo hard!) She pieced the quilt top, I did the back. She helped me to spray baste (she's an old pro at this as she has helped me before) & she tried out some straight line quilting. I finished up the quilting & bound it for her.
Her little sister Kendall arrived in August & Rachel was excited to give her the gift she had put so much effort into :)

Summer Sampler: Blocks 5-10

blocks 5 thru 10 a photo by twelfthzodiac on Flickr.

There is still a little bit of summer left for me to finish these, 2 to go!
If you are keeping track, you will notice there is no photo of block #4. My 'garden path' looks more like 'underwater vomit'. It is an explosion of blue, in a bad way that I didn't notice until it was all finished. Then it became glaringly obvious! I *think* I will keep it anyway, so it will make an appearance in a later post, all quilted up & looking less vomit-y. (Here's hoping!)
Of these last blocks, the top left 'Evening Star' & bottom middle 'Lucky Pieces' are my favourites.
I have a plan for piecing everything together into a quilt top, but unfortunately, I will have to wait for fabric in the mail in order to finish. Fabric that isn't even ordered yet...! But, I have a plan, yay! That's something! lol Considering the different sizes of some of my blocks, I am happy for a plan that I think will even everything out perfectly.

Pretty Bird Quilt

My latest finish is a quilt & pillow set commissioned by a relative for her little girl. She chose the fabric collection 'Pretty Bird' by Pillow & Maxfield & I added in some Kona Ocean, Grass & Robin's Egg Blue to round things out.
It is approx 45x60" and I quilted it with straight lines.

Pretty Bird Quilt a photo by twelfthzodiac on Flickr.

Side B


I am proud of this project! The pillows all have invisible zippers - it was my first time using these & they turned out so good, it's hard to find the zips even when you're looking for them... lol...that could be just me though :P

Mira

Mira a photo by twelfthzodiac on Flickr.

This kitten just loves to fur up quilts that aren't hers!
This was right before it went into the laundry though, so it was okay.
The little stinker.

Summer Sampler Series - The First Three

Has anyone else been following this quilt along? I first read about it on Faith's blog,  fresh lemons (although there are three blog hosts contributing) & I think the striking solid colour mock-ups are what convinced me to give it a try! I mean, just look at that awesome badge over there -->  I can't wait to see Faith's quilt all finished up in those colours.

Having finished the first 3 blocks & spending some time looking through the flickr group, I have to say that the solid fabric blocks are my favourite! If I had them on me, I'd use them too. Which is actually shocking to me as I am using one of my all time favourite collections, Modern Meadow. It just looks so good in solids!

This will be a quilt for myself  :)
Here are my first 3 blocks.

North Star, Greek Cross & Mosaic

These blocks are growing on me... I think my issue is that I am not used to this type of piecing so I'm not able to visualize what the block will end up looking like, which makes fabric selection more like guesswork. If I were making more than one block with the same design, I could play around with the fabrics a little more, mix & match to see what I like best.

 I'm not even sure you could call what I have done in my quilting career up to this point 'piecing'. My strip quilts & 'make it up as I go' patterns are so much easier than this! These are the first triangles I've ever done. I was laughing through the first 2 blocks, but 'mosiac', with all those HST (half square triangles)?! omg. That was so not fun! I am finding my 1/4" seam is not very accurate & that threw off everything. I only let myself rip out one line of stitching that desperately needed it. For everything else I am reminding myself that this quilt is for me & it doesn't have to be perfect.

I hope to tackle the next two tonight. After all the HST's of block #4, I will be so grateful to try paper piecing! So many firsts here for me. It may not feel comfortable yet, but I'm happy to be learning a few things & challenging myself to the point where I *feel* the challenge, but I don't want to throw my sewing machine out the window. Yet.