Baby Girl

This was made over a year ago... when I decided to start quilting I made 4 quilts one right after another... this was the last of the 4. I had a lot of friends who were pregnant at the time and figured someone would be having a little girl... but NOPE... they were all boys... so I've been holding on to it just waiting for the special little girl to give it to! it looks kinda blue in the pic but it really is rather purpley... if that really is a word. One of Ben's coworkers had a little girl so I told Ben to take it to her. She will still be on maternity leave by the time we leave for MN, but someone in the office will be sure she gets it when she returns.

Baby Boy

This was made of material I had already... I wanted to try out mitering boarders so I picked a cozy fleece that was too small for anything else, and added boarders with a flannel... then I bound it with satin blanket binding... worked pretty slick! I used the walking foot for some simply quilting and "poof" and instant gift! I gave it to Buddy's coworker who just had a baby... well... his wife did actually. They liked the blanket none the less!

OH NOOOOOOOoooooo.....

yesterday I started the stitching in the ditch of the court house steps quilt... when I realized I PUT A BLOCK IN UPSIDE DOWN!!! it's far to late to un-sew and re do it now, but it keeps staring at me... there it is clear as day... GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh well, life goes on... I have yet to make a perfect project so this is no exception!

The quilting is going well... I've done enough ditch stitching to hold it all together... I was a little daring with my thread choice... I used a matching red on the top and in the bobbin since the tension on my machine isn't right so you can see the bobbin on the top and top thread on the back.... rather than trying to fix that I just improvised, the reason it is daring is the backing is the same light color I used for the background of the redwork, so we'll.. the back shows all the stitches... quite well.... I knew I would have to use a red for stitching in the ditch on the borders, and probably could have gotten away with using light color when I outlined the light squares... but I just wanted to do it all the same.... less times changing thread and winding bobbins means more time sewing, eh?

I still don't know what I'm going do where there is redwork... it needs something on those blocks to hold it all together but don't know what... any ideas?

here comes the Judge... again...

Okay, I'm ready to think about the judge quilt again...
(check this out in case you forgot where we were...) http://prairiedawn.blogspot.com/2007/02/here-comes-judge.html
let us continue... shall we...
I've been thinking about the borders more... I went back to the original fabric I planned for borders and started to think it might be just what the quilt needs... . It isn't in the quilt at all so I don't know if that is good or bad. It does have the right color scheme, so I suppose that is good.
I like Morgans suggestion of the cornerstone with more redwork, but I really don't want to do that much more redwork.... I'm planning on putting another small redwork design on the label on the back along with using the same floss to embroider the label... speaking of label... got any clever ideas for a title or short explanation for the quilt... it's gotta make note of the fact that it's a courthouse steps design for sure... okay, back to borders...
here is a couple options...



The light boarders are left over strips from the quilt... I cut a bit too much... oops, but hey, it helps now....
I'm planning on doing a dark inner border... light red second border, then dark binding...




option 1: I like this best, but I would have to buy more fabric to finish it... (click on the pic for a close up)




Option 2: I have enough of this one... but don't think I like it as much... i like it.. but not as much... I think it's a bit too light or something...


I initially thought of using the same light I used as background of the redwork for the second border, but think that is too light for the border... especially since I think option 2 is a bit on the light side, the background ecru shade is definitely too light...

hmm... dilemmas....

Four Square....

For my husband's grandparents 60th wedding anniversary, everyone in the family is suppose to make a quilt block for a memory quilt. Well... there are 4 of us in the family... so there are 4 blocks to make. I decided to do hand prints for the boys... Buddy wanted a twins logo on his, and I found a cool pattern of an appliqued loon, so I decided to make that for myself... just finished them last night... gotta send them off to Buddy's mom so she can piece the whole thing together... looking forward to seeing it when it is all done!

Here comes the Judge...

I've been working on a wall hanging for my husbands boss, a judge, for the past year. Okay, so I've been thinking about it for about a year when I first learned that this is a quilt block named, courthouse steps. Get it, judge, courthouse steps.. hehehe.. anyways. So I looked around and one pattern, from Fon's and Porter really struck me... I kept coming back to it thinking, "I love that, I could do that..." If you haven't already done so, stop, go look at the website, see the pattern I'm talking about... okay, now we can continue.. I wasn't such a fan of the fall leaves so after hemming and hawing, and getting some support from my quilt support team (you know who you are) I decided to drop the leaves and do some redwork designs in the open spaces. Well, I don't know if I've ever done embroidery before, but it didn't take me too long to get the hang of things. I wish I would have used some stabilizer or something under the fabric cause it's isn't a flat as it should be. I did finish all 4 designs (they were quilt stencils) and pieced the top. I need to add the borders now. I'm a "figure it out as you go" sort of gal, so I didn't really know what I wanted to use for borders ahead of time, well, I thought I did, but it doesn't look right so now I'm stuck. I need some help. Any ideas?