Cousin Kelly's Second Baby Girl!

Kelly's adding another one to her adorable family! Little Brigid has already been welcomed into the world, unfortunately her loving cousin is a bit behind in her quilting. I've just gotten the appliqueing done, and am planning on getting the batting to do the quilting tomorrow.  Again, this one was a learning experience, and I'm going to be attempting a minky backing again. Well here's the preliminary shots!

Here's the whole top. It's all batiks, and I love that it's a mix of all different hues of pink.

I did her name the same way that I did with my previous baby quilt. I absolutely love the font, I found it at dafont, they have a ton of fun fonts that can help make your quilt so much more personalized.

One of two flowers in the corners of the borders. I made them out of minky....this proved to be a little tricky. You're not supposed to iron minky, so using Steam-A-Seam was out. I hand cut the individual petals out, and traced the design onto the border with the washable Dritz marker. I used very small dots of Liquid Stitch to hold the petals in place.  I waited about 10 minutes before stitching. Again, I used a blanket stitch, and I had to be very careful because the hairs on the minky move making it hard to judge where the true edge of the fabric really is. I did find that if the minky got a little unruly, it was easily corrected by some close trimming with embroidery scissors.

I'm not sure how I'm going to quilt it yet, I'll most likely try mimicking the flowers in the borders in some of the blocks, but I was thinking of throwing in some hummingbirds and dragonflies like there are in the fabric. Hopefully I'll be getting the batting tomorrow and having a quilting party on the longarm over Thanksgiving!!

Elizabeth Has Arrived!!

Little miss Elizabeth has graced us with her presence! She is the cutest little bundle, and you all know what that means! I finally got to finish her quilt and give it to her wonderful mother, my cousin.  As planned I cut out the letters for her name and blanket stitched them on. I used Lite Steam-A-Seam 2 to stabalize the letters on the quilt top. So, drum roll please, here are the pictures!

This is the quilted and bound, finished product.

I learned something very important while appliqueing: Be careful when putting a light fabric on top of a darker patterened fabric, it has a tendency to show through.

Some of the quilting that I did in the blocks, I did get to put the little birdies in, just like I planned, chirp chirp!

The quilting in the borders, I absolutely love the little rosebud, can you see it?

I changed the game plan a little bit and went with a minky backing. It's the first time I ever used one, and I put in on the longarm. I found that it was very stretchy, so using my side clamps had to be done with a lighter touch. I also noticed when I was done that the minky covers up most of the quilting, I was a little disappointed with that, but it's really good if you've got a couple of stitches that you're not so fond of.

Overall I loved making this quilt. The new mommy, daddy and grandma really seemed to like it too. When her daddy came home from work one of the first things he did was put the minky up to his face! Incorporating the bedding that she used in her room turned out to be a big hit too.  The quilt matched perfectly with her entire room. I'm so happy I was able to make this for her.