#modabemyneighbor

So many things to love about this quilt:   houses ... hearts ... free patterns ... fat quarter friendly .... trees.  The trees were really fun and, in this quilt, I love them as much as the houses.

I found the pattern download at Bear Creek Quilting Company, my go-to website for free patterns and (not free) fabric.  Now that Fabric Depot has closed, I suspect I'll visit even more.

When my older sister and I were young, my sister went to camp for a week every summer.  I don't remember where it was, but I do remember getting A&W hamburgers and root beer floats on the long (for a 6 year old) car ride there.  When I saw this quilt, it brought back memories of those trips to the summer camp:  the fresh smell of the fir trees, the musty cottages, the dock at the lake.  At least, I think there was a dock ... and a lake ...the memories are very hazy.  The only thing I remember clearly is that I had absolutely no desire to go to camp and never really understood my sister's desire to do so.

The pieced pattern uses just a bit of applique and I did even less.  The flower circles are applique--easy--but there are supposed to be applique birds here and there, nesting on top of trees and houses.  I have nothing against birds, but I found them to be a little ... fussy.  As in, I didn't want to fuss with them.

This house, for example, should have a bird on the roof.  I guess I just don't have patience for that kind of stuff.

Another applique flower and a stylized American flag, which I love and which also proves that Christmas stash can come in handy any time of year.

I started this quilt many months ago, before all of the babies started to arrive.  I had originally purchased a yellow print for backing, but found this brown and white checkered print in the Outdoor Sale at Fabric Depot and am happy with my second choice.  I needed six inches more in length and added a row of houses, now my very favorite part of the quilt. 

A bit too much sunshine for taking pictures of a quilt, but then we NEVER complain about sunshine in Oregon.

Hey There, Little Red Riding Hood

...you sure are looking good

you're everything a big bad wolf could want ...

Another baby quilt was needed and I was ready to do something different. I confirm that this particular project met that requirement--for better or worse, as the saying goes.  As often happens, inspiration hit as I watched random You-Tube quilting videos and discovered the existence of the Add-A-Quarter Ruler, a clever little tool that allows one to measure and trim a perfect quarter inch seam allowance.  Wow, this ruler is the best invention since the one tablespoon cookie dough scoop! 

I've had some experience with paper piecing, but the very existence of this ruler led me to believe that there might be more to the technique than I had realized.  Ha!  So. Much. More.  Over the course of this project, I read many blog posts and tutorials that highlighted common paper piecing mistakes and I made every single one.  Sometimes twice. The very best ever tutorial is on Phoebe Moon Quilt Designs. I must be a True Paper Piecer, because I committed every one of Phoebe's Seven Deadly Sins of Foundation Paper Piecing.  Again, twice.

There are some elements of paper piecing I'll just never get, like WHY would one be expected to print a mirror image (reverse image, whatever) of a pdf pattern when one desires to make the exact replica of the depicted product?  I mean, basically the seller is saying "here is a pattern to make THIS lovely quilt" when what they really mean is "if you want YOUR quilt to look like this, then you have to click around on your computer until you can find the printer setting to reverse this image, or Little Red Riding Hood is going to be looking left instead of right and she won't even be on the right path to Grandma's House".  Yes, I do have an extra Little Red Riding Hood block with the darling girl walking right out of the side of the quilt.  

The other frustration was caused by my fabric selection, so that one was on me.  I LOVE the Little Aspens fabric, which is from the Maywood Studios Forest Friends collection.  There is a definite direction in the print, however, and getting all those trees to stand up tall and straight was tedious and time consuming, and more than a couple of times tree branches were listing a bit to the right or left and had to be straightened, i.e. a new fabric piece cut and resewn.  The next paper piecing project will have NO directional prints.  Period.

I also used a few prints from the Cottontail Cottage Collection by Bunny Hill.  I used Meadow Green Houses from this collection for the backing.  These houses are where Grandma's neighbors live, I'm sure of it.

Farm Girl Vintage

When Craig asked me what I wanted a couple Christmases ago, I didn't hesitate:  Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage book. I had recently discovered Lori's Bee In My Bonnet blog and immediately knew I needed to make a Farm Girl Vintage quilt. Or two.  The first was made for Cara's Evelyn and I somehow ended up with no pictures of that baby quilt (so how did THAT happen?). This second Farm Girl Vintage quilt was made for Caitlin's Lucas, with less pink and more blue, though Miss Piggy just has to be pink.

The book offers 45 Farm Girl Blocks with instructions for both 6" and 12" blocks. Even better, for us unimaginative types (did I mention I need a pattern?), there are layouts where you can plop your chosen squares into a quilt, table runner, table topper, wall hanging, pot holder ... so many options! I used the Country Fair Quilt Setting in the Small Version, which has 12 6" squares and finishes at 30 1/2" x 37 1/2", perfect for a baby quilt.

I need more practice in embroidering faces and other body parts, I was satisfied with Miss Piggy's tail, but Mr. Barn Cat's whiskers needed more work.  The instructions called for three strands of thread, but I really think two would have been better. I was worried about damaging the fabric by taking out the stitching more than once, so I just went with the second attempt. Definitely more practice needed, and I want to play around with different types of stitches. 

Some of the pieces in these blocks are less than an inch, and I've only recently read about using starch on fabric prior to cutting.  I never pre-wash my fabric:  I like that vintage look that a bit of shrinkage provides. If I make the 6" blocks again, I will not pre-wash, but I will starch the fabric to stabilize those small pieces and hopefully the blocks will be a bit more precise.

Elephant Parade

Yet another baby blanket, this time for a co-worker. I started looking for elephant patterns when Lisa first announced she was expecting and found the Elephant Parade quilt pattern at SewFreshQuilts. 
Better yet, the pattern had been the subject of a quilt-along back in 2015 and many participants had linked photos of their finished blocks and quilts. I always love to see the variety of colors and variations on a pattern. I am such a rule-follower, seldom varying from any given set of instructions, and am always in awe of the ways others find to express their creativity and individuality.

I love Dear Stella fabrics and had already admired the Welcome to the Jungle collection.  The blue, black and yellow giraffes from this collection are actually my favorites, but only elephants would do for Lisa and her baby-boy-to-be.  Dear Stella also has a line called Scallop Dot, offered in a variety of colors in different collections, and the blue, green, and pink coordinated perfectly with the Welcome to the Jungle Elephants. Instead of using a pure white background, I chose a fabric with a white background with gray spirals, the reverse of the fabric used for Mr. Elephant's ear.

Mr. Elephant was very fun to make, although it makes me nervous to sew toys. The pattern called for the ears to be hand-sewn on to the body, but not wanting any parts to detach and become a hazard, I added a good half-inch to the width of the pattern and sewed the ears into a vertical seam. The seam created small tucks at the top and bottom of the ear, but elephants aren't exactly smooth so I decided the tucks are reminiscent of an elephant's wrinkles. I also machine quilted the tale pieces and sewed them securely into the seam and added a zig-zag finish to the inside seam.  Those ears and that tail are not coming off unless under extreme duress.

The spiral edge-to-edge quilting mimics the spiral print of the background fabric. I had hoped for a bit of sunshine while taking pictures, but the clouds and wind persisted. Charlotte and her sister wandered over to see what I was doing and we chatted until my fingers were too cold and numb to care whether the pictures were adequately detailed.

Home is Where the Heart Is

The Home is Where the Heart Is quilt pattern combines my two favorite quilting motifs:  hearts and houses. Kyle and Becky opted out of knowing the baby's gender before birth so the only thing I had to work with was teal, Becky's favorite color.  Emboldened by her declaration that "Boys can wear pink!" I chose prints from Maywood Studio's Roam Sweet Home fabric collection. I was first attracted to the collection by the Pennant Patchwork print, which reminds me of another favorite motif:  bunting.

I used Pennant Patchwork for the backing and the quilt was small enough that the backing did not need to be pieced. I love every single color and pattern in this fabric.

It is quilted with Loopy Hearts, which seems perfect. The quilt turned out a bit more ... well ... girlie than I had intended. But I hope all those hearts convey to Louis, born on Christmas Eve 2017, how much he is loved and cherished.

Nativity

Christmas came and went all too quickly so I am happy I started looking for a Christmas present project fairly early. I found these sweet nativity scenes on Pinterest and it turns out that the year of the house remodel was the perfect year for this project. I have an aversion to vacuuming carpeted stairs and convinced Craig to replace the carpet on the stairs with hardwood at the same time we replaced the upstairs carpet. The scraps of maple left over from the stair project were perfect and I just had to purchase heads from Joanne's. And chalk paint, which I have always wanted to try out.

I love the distressed look and read up on how to achieve it with chalk paint. Several articles suggested Vaseline and I tried that approach first. This technique is a bit messy and difficult to control the results, though I think it would work better on larger projects. Since we have a (seemingly) endless supply of every grade of sandpaper imaginable (or so it seems to me), I just painted the pieces then used a very fine finishing sandpaper to achieve the amount of distressing I wanted. I got carried away a few times and had to repaint a couple of pieces, but got the hang of it pretty quick.

I had sage green burlap on hand, left over from office Halloween decorations, which worked well for Mary's shawl. I love it when craft supplies have multiple uses!