That's not to say I haven't been sewing. I got a few things done in between gardening and working and all that other stuff that takes away from creative time.
My upstairs neighbors had their first baby (a girl!) this summer. They didn't know the sex ahead of time, so their nursery was fairly neutral with a lot of dark-ish gray accents. I thought some Kona Coal and a packet of mini-charm square dots would fit in nicely. The 1/2" straight-line quilting in the wide border gives it some great texture for baby hands to explore, especially where the vertical and horizontal overlap.
Good Night/Good Morning (front), and Archie sneaking into the shot
My camera is a cat magnet.
There's a gray-green dot in the backing that matched the nursery walls perfectly. I snagged their painter in the lobby one day to get the name of the paint color and got the chip at the hardware store. Lo and behold, I had a Valori Wells dot in my stash that worked and brought some more life to it. Forget trying to get those dots straight, though -- they weren't printed on grain, so I gave up fighting and let them go all wonky.
Sometimes his appearance is more subtle than others.
Good Night/Good Morning (back)
My Monkey Girl turned 12 earlier this month, obsessed with pink and aqua, the colors of her new bedroom. I figure this presents me with gift possibilities for the next, oh, four years at least.
I raided the pink stash bin and used a 20" pillow form. There are a few lines of aqua thread among the pink straight-line quilting, and a couple lines done by hand just to mix it up. There is one square of overly-furry fleece that I added at the last minute, and it turns out it's her favorite one. The black piping really made everything pop.
I used up some half-yards and fat quarters of fun baby prints for this quick-n-easy quilt for a friend's first grandchild. I think I've had these prints since I started quilting ten years ago -- finally using them in their entirety (no scraps! hooray!) was a cathartic experience.
Getting a LOT of mileage out of my $2/yard Ikea purple solid.
It makes great binding!
Also, in an effort to shed some of my inventory (are you noticing a theme here?), I also opened an Etsy shop this summer. Not a lot of traffic so far, but that's due to my inability to self-promote -- although for about a week, Facebook kept trying to sell me my own quilt in one of their targeted (You have pictures of quilts in your profile! You must need more!) ads. It was a little surreal, having it show up on the sidebar.
In the coming weeks, I'll be featuring some of my fabric in the shop. I have a lot of older, discontinued Jane Sassaman prints that aren't doing me a lot of good just hanging out in the closet, as well as several other bolts that aren't getting used up as quickly as I thought. So stay tuned!
It feels good to be back! Sorry I was gone so long!
