This post is brought to you by the number 2.

I missed Finished For Friday last week, which is hosted by Lit and Laundry every week. I was trying for a quilty finish every week this month, but missed it. I did have a finish last Friday- I finished being 33! My birthday was Saturday, and not one, but TWO of my aunt-in-laws offered to babysit for us, so we got to go out on both Friday and Saturday nights. (TWICE in a row!!) Happy Birthday to me!!

I did (finally) get the TWO baby quilts bound this week so they are ready to go to their new owners on Monday.

For my birthday Paul went with me to TWO new-to-me quilt stores in Green Bay, and I chose a yard of fabric at each. (See how good I was? Only TWO new yards of fabric!)

Jane Sassaman designed this one for me:

Amy Butler kindly thought this one up just for my birthday:

THEN we went to Joann's and I got a new cutting mat! Yay! Paul was quite a good boy during our outing, although he did try to borrow my scarf to hang himself at one point.

The boys spent Saturday night sleeping over at their great-aunt and uncle's house, so during my peaceful quiet morning with NO CHILDREN I made myself a present- a new bag like the one I made for my cousin.

I used a bright green (thrifted) linen tablecloth to make this bag:

The lining is polka dots of course, and I put pen pockets in again. Loving those.

I cannot believe how much more I can get done with no little, mmm, helpers we'll call them.

I addition to binding the baby quilts, in the past two weeeks, I finished TWO quilt tops. Well, finished the centers anyway. This is my Cherry Checkerboard quilt I am making to use up the cherry applique squares left over from Cherry Surprise. I finished making all the blocks and stitched them together, but I still need to put the borders on. It turned out very narrow, which I don't like, but in order to get the Irish chain to look right, this was the layout I had to use. (It's about 60" x 84" at this point with no borders added.) I think as I add each border I will make the side ones an inch wider than the top and bottom ones to kind of fix this issue.

This next one has been sitting in my WIP box for FAR too long. I finally stitched the petals down on all the flowers. (It took me a while to collect the right thread colors.) I am not quite sure what I will do for borders on this one. It will be a play mat/blankie for my newest niece, Baby Autumn, who is just the cutest thing in the world. She loves to stare at my Mom's ceiling fan, so I think she will like this.

A closeup of the satin stitch holding the petals down.

My SIL should be able to wash this a hundred million times with no problems. These babies are ON there.

So that's what I've been up to. If you have a finish to share, head over to Lit and Laundry and join in! Be sure to compliment her beautiful hexagon quilt. It's gorgeous!

Finish for Friday- vintage sheet quilt

I have a Finish for Friday again! I am shooting for one every Friday this month. You can join in, too. Just hop on over to Lit and Laundry to see what others have finished, and maybe even post something of your own!

My finish is the quilting on this vintage sheet quilt- I had the top done already but was procrastinating (of course) with the quilting. This quilt is for Paul's cousin's little girl, Sydney. I made one for her new baby brother and realized I had not made one for her when she was born. Her parents just bought a new-old house and coincidentally her bedroom is going to be orange and pink!

I did the closely spaced wavy line quilting again, which is my favorite quilting technique right now. I think it goes especially well with the vintage sheets because it reminds me of how old bedspreads were quilted.

The back is a cute, BRIGHT vintage sheet as well. Everything in this quilt is from an upcycled sheet, except for the flower head itself, which is from a kit that was supposed to be used to make placemats. Some of the sheets are not extremely old, but they are all used/recycled. They. Are. So. Soft. This is the first quilt that I have made entirely from vintage sheets and I have to make one for myself!!! As I was quilting it, I just kept running my hands over the finished part. It feels so GOOD!!!

This is Sydney's baby brother's quilt. I showed a picture of this before, but the quiting was not finished at that point.

I did a version of the same quilting, but switched directions in each square. I won't do that again!!!! I couldn't lock my stitch because the machine kept switching directions when I did that so I had to pull all the tails to the back and knot them.

There are over a thousand little knots on the back of this quilt. Which means I pulled half that many tails through to the back. Not fun.

It looks really nice, but was not worth the effort. I think the straight line all the way down the quilt looks almost as good for about a quarter of the effort.

So maybe by next Friday I will have them bound and ready to go to their new little owners!

Another semi-finished quilt

I hereby declare January 2010 "The Month of the Finished Quilt"! I would declare 2010 "The YEAR of the Finished Quilt", but I really don't think I could handle the pressure for an entire year.

So here is a finished quilt top:

And back:

This back is totally inspired by a quilt I saw on Flickr. It's such a simple, but effective, layout. And it makes this quilt reversible! Now we will find out if I can keep the back and the front even while I quilt it. I made the border on the back a couple inches larger than it has to be all the way around, so I did leave myself a little wiggle room. After I trim it, theoretically, it will have 6" strips of white all the way around to match the inner ones.

A gratuitous shot of my oh-so-cute helper (for once, not one of the cats):

I had to show a closeup of this fabric because it matches the fish skeleton appliques SO well. I got it during a sale at a quilt store near my hometown- Jeri's Quilt Patch. They have a huge sale every year where the fat quarters are a DOLLAR! So these were an awesome deal, but some of the other fabric was NOT so that made up for it.

I actually had this quilt laying out on the (washed) (well, wiped down) floor to baste, when I realized my batting wasn't big enough. So I can't quilt it until I get some batting. But I almost finished a quilt. I intended to!

I didn't want to waste a clean floor so I did baste a baby quilt and I will hopefully have an actual finish for the end of the week. But maybe not. No pressure.

Cherries Jubilant!

This has been a long time coming! I started this quilt around 5 years ago, and tonight (well, this morning I guess) I finally finished making the blocks! It's 3:30 am, and I'm tired, but happy. Right now they don't even look cute to me anymore. LOL! I bet after a little sleep that will change. I need to mess with my layout a little more, or I could just leave it there and let the Committee for Arranging Tops Sloppily (C.A.T.S.) do their magic. ( Ok, I DID mention that it's 3:30 in the morning right?)

For some reason I have had a hard time with this quilt. It looks so scrappy and random, but I put a lot of effort into making it look like that. This one just didn't come very easily. Ah, well, it's the ones that give us the most trouble that we love the best. (Right, Mom?)

I kept taking it out, working on it a little, putting it back, taking it out just to look at it, putting it back. I even gave it to my sister for a while, but she gave it back after cutting some strips. This baby just didn't want to be borned I guess.And now I can clean up THIS mess! Well, to be truthful it's even worse now but I'm not going to bother taking another picture AT 3:30 AM! So 'night all, and hopefully the next post will be a completed top.

Some of my quilts

Duh! I realized that folks will want to see pictures (just like I do)! So here are a few that I have saved on my laptop already.

Here is my stash/sewing cabinet. It is "upcycled" from an old Sauder armoire that my grandparents used for years and passed on to me about 10 years ago. I had hubby put bead board behind it and I painted it off-white to match my dining room furniture. I sew on the dining room table and this way everything is handy. (So, yes, sometimes we eat in the living room!)

And this is a quilt I made for my SIL's wedding almost 3 years ago and I JUST finished it a couple months ago. (She hasn't even gotten it yet.) In my defense I had a second son in that time and worked full-time, night shift (DH works days) so there was very little "me" or craft time. These were their wedding colors and the center square is copied from their invitation. (A local embroidery shop did that for a reasonable price.) This quilt was long-arm quilted (not by me!) and is very large- a king-size.

This one is the one I chose for my avatar as I made it for myself. To keep! Yay! (I have given most of my quilts away.) I got the applique pattern from a book at the library and as I started it about 5 years ago, I have no idea what book it's from. It's a very happy quilt! This quilt was also long-arm quilted. This one is about a full-size.

This one was made for a friend's (30th!) birthday recently and it came together quickly. This was my first attempt at embellishing and I loved doing that. (It goes well with my OCD.) I do have regrets with this quilt. I don't like the borders- too big- and I wish I had quilted it more heavily. I hand quilted it (in the ditch), though, and only had 2 weeks to make the quilt, start to finish, so it is what it is. This is between a lap and a twin size quilt.

Here are some closeups of the individual blocks. This one I hand sewed little crystals "in the ditch". I got all the embellishments from old clothes- prom/bridesmaid dresses that were beyond other usefulness.

Little crystals in the corners.

For this one I used ribbon and wove it for the very center of the block.

The brown fabric has iridescent dots- so pretty in RL, but does not photograph well.

It's a bit hard to see, but there are little mirrored beads all over this square.

This block has turquoise sequins. Yes, I put sequins on a quilt! (I sewed them on really tight.)

More of the ribbon. I so enjoyed all the little fussy details on this quilt.

This quilt had a lot of sparkle to it. When my friend opened it and shook it out, it caught the light and just shimmered. I loved that, so I will have to make one for myself like that eventually.

I apologize for the quality of my photos. I need a better camera. That is on the list AFTER I get a new sewing machine. I had borrowed one but I think I wore it out as the needle won't go up and down anymore, so currently I am sewing on an old (pretty rough) White machine I got at a rummage sale for $3. (Good thing I picked that up!) DH has promised me a new machine, so here's hoping it's sooner rather than later.