Baby baby!

Happy Friday, and happy BABY to my cousin!  She's expecting a baby girl in October, her first, and I can't wait! 

This cousin has a few other quilts of mine. If you've been reading this blog a really long time you might remember the Harley T-shirt memory quilt and the jumpsuit Pockets quilts I made from her father's clothes.  The pockets quilt was a kid quilt, and at the time she hadn't even met the man she eventually married.  I made it thinking of future kids, and now one is almost here!

This quilt is made from the same tall nine-patch block that was the May Covered in Love block drive, just in a different color scheme.  These gorgeous colors with a subtle nautical theme are what my cousin has chosen for the nursery.  I quilted the top and batting with a stipple before adding the backing and ruffle.  I used the pre-folded sating edging and pleated it on, then attached the minky back pillowcase-style.

I top stitched all around the edge to anchor the ruffle and keep everything crisp. Because I knew the top would shrink and the minky wouldn't I deliberately made the minky a bit small and didn't add tacking stitches to hold all three layers together until after the first wash.

I was using minky remnants and had to piece together two to make it big enough. This turned out to be a happy accident because blue and white are the colors of the baby's father's beloved baseball team.

The quilt, along with some bibs and a lovie, has already been sent to its new home, now we're just waiting for a baby!

 Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it Friday

PS- If you are looking for the June Covered in Love block drive you can find it right here!

Odds and Ends and a Cat

I've been working on getting some odds and ends wrapped up this week.  First up on the design wall is a new baby quilt for my cousin. She is having a baby girl an doing the room in a coral/navy/teal nautical theme. I am so excited! Expect to see lots of baby sewing going on in the months to come.  Of course I am in love with all things ocean so I was able to dive into my scraps for all the bits for this little quilt.

Speaking of baby sewing. This was another test block for my do. Good Stitches bee that I sewed into a baby quilt size. My month is coming around in June so I'm thinking about what to ask for.  I need to find something pretty simple since I asked for paper pieced blocks last time around.  Speaking of those paper pieced blocks...

Judy at Quilt Paradigm volunteered to do some quilting for Covered in Love and she's agreed to finish the Forest QAL top for me. I'm so psyched!  Judy became permanently one of my favorite people on the planet back in 2014 when she sent me a box of her scraps to play with.  She does incredibly gorgeous quilting on her domestic machine and she already completed the two tops I sent her.  These two tops were made by another volunteer, Jo from North Carolina.  Please go check out Judy's blog and look at the amazing job she did on our tops

Judy's picture of her A-mazing quilting, click to go to her post

Speaking of CiL, as some of you know we were selected to be one of the recipients of Hands2Help quilts this year and the first one just arrived from Cynthia!  It's a gorgeous, saturated, bright quilt. I especially love the backing she used with gold metallic fabric.  After I attached the label Rory completed the final cuddly-ness inspection. (Don't worry, the quilt got a wash after this!)

Speaking of Rory, she's been ever so helpful lately.  I know ever quilter has had this happen to them: people find out that you can sew and they assume  that means you can sew anything.  Because upholstery and garment making are totally the same as quilting, right?

So.  My dad has been trying for months to get me to re-do these cushion covers he found to make them fit the seats for his airplane (he's a private pilot.) Two seater plane means four cushions (butt and back for 2 chairs.)  I protested and insisted that I wasn't remotely skilled enough but in the end he wore me down.

So that's what the hole in my desk is for! To think, I've been putting my machine in it this whole time.

The original cushions had piping which he agreed to toss out.  So after some experimentation and some cursing 2 oversized seat cushions became correctly sized and 1 bench-seat back cushion became 2.

The divot in the front is for the gear stick and fortunately was not part of what I had to modify

It's not a quilty finish, but I'm proud none the less!  And that is finally the end of my rambling, winding weekend sewing.

Linking to Oh Scrap! and Design Wall Monday.