collaboration

Stephanie and I make an awesome team. One of our favorite things to do is to peruse the fabric store and come up with great combinations. We try to have an idea in mind beforehand so that we know how many different fabrics we'll need, how much we'll need, and what theme or feeling we have for the finished project, etc.
(click to enlarge) In this case, I saw a similar quilt in an old magazine I had laying around. It was a much larger quilt, on a different scale, and was bright green and hot pink. I knew I wanted to create a quilt with lots of great colors - and I knew that I wanted it to be boyish.

I liked the brown print a lot and used it as my inspiration for the other fabrics. Ideally, I would have backed the quilt with the brown as well, but I didn't for two reasons: 1-I wanted the print on the back to be less busy than that, and 2-The other fabrics in the quilt were much less expensive (it's backed with the red print).

I got the fabrics home, cut, and laid out, and then sewed it all together. It's a super simple pattern and it came together pretty quickly. We liked the circular theme throughout many of the fabrics and wanted the quilting to follow. We picked a pattern with a varied swirl and Stephanie got it marked and started quilting.

Stephanie finished the quilting and binding last weekend, so we were finally able to give it to my newest nephew, Mason. My sister-in-law loved it. I hope they get a lot of use out of it!

rag quilt

I finished my rag quilt today and it's so stinking cute!!

Rag quilts are generally made by sewing together 'sandwiches' composed of 2 layers of fabric with batting or a layer of flannel in between. I wanted this one to be lightweight, but snuggly, so I have cotton prints on the front and pink flannel on the back.

Rag quilts are also generally stitched diagonally from corner to corner, forming an X on each piece. I cut all the squares a couple weeks ago and got them all sewed together with the X's and HATED it! These pieces are small enough that they don't require stitching within the squares, so I unpicked all of them and sewed the blanket without the diagonal stitching. Sunday, I sat down and got it sewn together and started cutting the exposed seams. Monday, I went and bought a new pair of scissors to save my hands. LOL (If you're going to make a rag quilt, I HIGHLY recommend getting a pair of spring-loaded scissors. Your hands will thank you for it!)

I want to get some better photos taken before I post this on Etsy, but I'll have to wait on that. It seems I can only get good photos between 9:00-11:00 AM and I happen to be at work during that timeframe. Ugh.