willa's pillow

Friends of ours just had a baby (okay, it was like 3 months ago), and we finally got over to see them this week.  Their baby's name is Willa and she is cute with a full head of hair. 

I made her a pillow as a birthday gift.  I know babies can't really use pillows, but as she gets older it will come in handy.  David helped me with the design. I brought him an idea and he gave me a different idea and then I kind of combined the two ideas for the finished product.

 TA-DA!

 Her pillow is fairly small, and I made it in cute colors that aren't necessarily girly.  Our friends were happy about that.  This is before I quilted it and made it into a pillow.

I did a couple different quilting designs- some outlining the fun shapes on the fabrics and the middle lines were just wavy lines with little loops in them.  I really like how it turned out.

 I also embroidered Willa's name on the back with a little flower.  Happy little girl!

half square triangle quilt top

I finally finished the half square triangle quilt top. David has claimed it for his own. He tells me I will just have to make something he doesn't like and then I can give it away or sell it :)

Of course I still have to make the backing, quilt it, and do the binding, but one big step is done!

been busy quilting

Since I made Weston's quilt, I've been busy making other quilted items.  Three of them are all based on the same combination of fabrics, just put together a bit differently and in different sizes.

First, I made a birthday quilt for our friend's baby who was born last year in October.  To me it was fitting that the quilt had a halloween theme.

Birthday Quilt back.

Then, seeing how that turned out, I decided to make a bigger quilt (lap quilt size) for David (and me).  But before I finished the Halloween quilt for us, I made a little table runner.  I wanted to practice my free motion quilting and see how it would end up looking on the Halloween quilt. I did a little playing around with different color threads for the top and bottom.  You can see where I switched the top thread in the second picture (on the right).  Not the best look, but it did make me realize I liked the black thread on top --it made it look much less busy.

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And now the Halloween quilt...I decided to use black sashing instead of the white I used on the Birthday quilt.

Here are the some of the squares I used in the Halloween quilt.

Here is what the quilt top looked like before I made the quilt sandwich and quilted it. 

and here it is after quilting (Sam is guarding it!):

 It shrunk a bit after washing--I didn't prewash any of the fabrics, so I usually expect some shrinkage.

I used an all-over free motion technique like on the table runner, but the scale of the pumpkins is bigger on the quilt.  Detail shot to the right.

We have been using it, but I think it will be put away for the summer.  I guess I'll have to make a different lap quilt we can use all year round!