Rainbows and Hearts

A friend recently asked me to make a baby quilt for a friend of hers.
The theme was rainbows. Well, I have experience making rainbow quilts. That's about all I've done the past few years.

For Example:

Rainbow Quilt for Goose 2011

Rainbow Quilt 2011

The Rainbow Quilt for Goose in 2011 was the pattern I used for Rainbow 2017.

Quilt for E, 2012

Quilt for Big Girl Goose 2014

Big Brother Quilt 2011

Final Quilt. I revised the pattern, turning it into a perfect square, rather than the original rectangle. I also removed the sashes and changed the color pattern.

Pieced backing, I like pieced backings. They feel like two quilts in one. Plus, for a baby quilt,
well, they WILL get puked on. So more pattern to hide stains is a must.

Brain storming in my sketch book.

Final Colors

Final colors and pattern. Note, it changed from here to square.

Cutting and piecing

Four blocks pieced. There was so much bias edging
that I used knit stay tape. That way much less stretching
during sewing.

Fun stuff you guys. Wish I had this in
college. 

I thought a pieced heart would be cute.
But I'm glad I didn't do it. 

Better

Best

So close you guys

Just a little appliqué

Piecing the back. I didn't have enough fabric in a pattern
for the backing, so a pieced backing was the way to go.
Plus, this is a baby quilt, and babies puke.  Several patterns
can disguise stains.

Stretching the quilt before safety-pin basting

One thing I forgot, this quilt was mostly sewn
on bias. So it stretched a lot. 

When started to quilt, well, it would pucker a lot.

I re-sewed my appliqué about four times.

Because of the puckering that happened with my
sewing, (I used a high loft batting to make it super squishy)
I had to do some re-sewing to remove a lot of loft
from the heart circle. Which led to some weird stretching.

The backing. 

This was a fun project. I'm thinking I might make a PDF pattern available on my Etsy. So if someone wanted to make a rainbow quilt, they could.

Till next project.

,Ruth

Well, it's quilting time.

It's been a long drought of new posts and such. That's completely my fault. I was in a very long and dusty creative block. Then, my sister had her baby. And it was QUILTIN' TIME! Thank you dear sweet Sullivan, you helped me out of my slump.

Here's some of the work I did that helped me back into the sewing creative groove.

These were leftover fabrics from another project I had done years earlier.

Another zig zag pattern? Yes I think so.

I made this design wall out of a 8'x4' piece of wall insulation foam board.
Wrapped in a piece of batting and then flannel, I never have to get on the floor to lay
out a quilt again!! Genius. It just lays agains the all, and is super lightweight.

Final idea approved my myself and my sister, and my mom.

I pieced it together, and then just did a basic stitch in the ditch to quilt it on my machine. 

Note my children's artwork and notes adorn my design wall.
I can use straight pins in it as a bulletin board as well.
I always have those around.

The backing had a little piece work in it. I rarely have enough fabric for the backing, and I love pieced backs. It's like two quilts in one!

 My dear little niece, Sullivan.

Thanks to Tery Wiemers for the
embroidery machine help.

My sister Sully is a teacher at a local high school and she helped me to get this embroidered with her name and date of birth. Big Thanks to Terry Wiemers the fashion design and sewing teacher who let me use the embroidery machine and worked it for us.

Actually I must thank Sully, without her I wouldn't have done this at all. Like I said, I was in a creative slump. Sort of. My sister was having a baby in May and was planning on name her Sullivan. So my older sister the original Sullivan, Sully to all of us, insisted we do a project together for our new baby Sully.

Sully: "Ruthie, we need to do a project for baby Sully. And by us I mean, that we brainstorm a project, and that you do it for me."

Ruth: "That definitely sounds like one of our projects."

Now Sully, is and was an artist and art teacher, and Home Ec teacher. And this was apparent even when we were children. She taught me art, and how to make taffy, and how to make candles, how to silk paint, and read me stories, and created treasure hunts and musicals that are lovingly recorded on video for all of our combined amusement and horror. For birthday presents, she would give me "gifts" that were more like projects. Like blank paper and water colors, or gave me an assignment that I would sometimes finish. Once I became a full fledged member of the BFA club, (bachelor of fine arts) we would work on projects together. And by together I mean, she would start one and I would finish it. She has been one of the most ardent supporters of EVERYTHING I do. Well, especially quilts. So after much brainstorming of ideas for little Sully, we decided to do a quilt. Mostly I decided because Sully and I couldn't agree. Maybe this was her plan all along. Hmnn, she's a mastermind older sister right?

So thanks big Sully, and little Sully, and Gracie for conspiring to help me get some fun work done.

Thanks and thanks again.

Ruthie

Peacocks and first Birthdays

My niece is going to turn one this Sunday. I'm not able to make it to her first birthday so I made her a little onesies for the occasion.

My sister's theme was "Peacocks".

Onesies for One Year Old

Here's my design process. I start with a pencil sketch on graph paper.

Throw out some rough ideas.

Start drawing in illustrator based on my sketches

Refine based on new ideas (I liked the dark outline)

Then I liked no outline but disliked the font

Better font, and the colors changed to
suit the printing. 

In the end I had to change the colors in illustrator, to suit them to my desk jet printer. They are hardly calibrated. So even though the final drawing looked a bit to "lime green and turquoise". The finished product looked much more kelly green and peacock blue after printing. Oh, the pains of printer calibration.

J.Bell Photography session 3 month old

About a week before my daughter turned 4 months a very talented photographer did a session with her......J. Bell Newborn/family photographer extraordinaire.

He's a pretty neat dude it only took about an hour, maybe because she was happy, maybe because the juju all aligned. He's done family photo's of us before and well, lots more since he made the very smart choice of marrying my sister.

He didn't ask me to promote his business, but I felt like it because I really loved the pictures. It's an easy process, very little crying, and the babies behaved too.


Here's a few peeks at some great shots he did for us.

Gosh Darn, I sure do make some cute babies.

Well, I guess Sarge helped.

,Ruth