Happpy St. Patrick's Day!!

Hello!  I hope you are having a very Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I made a new mini quilt to use for the month of March:

 

This mini is bigger than I typically make - it measures at 18 1/2 X 18 1/2.  Generally, my minis range anywhere from 12 - 16 inches.  For this mini, I started with the checkerboard border.  I used these units that were initially intended to be used in Grand Illusion, the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt this year:

Obviously, I ripped out the black fabric and replaced it with white.  Then I added a few additional blocks to make the units line up correctly as they went around the corners.  The borders dictated the size of the center.

For the shamrock, I traced three heart shapes and a stem shape onto green fabric, added fusible web to the back side and fused them to the center background fabric.  Then I used a machine blanket stitch to secure the shamrock to the background.  

I did outline quilting around the shamrock and diagonal lines in the border.  I'm very pleased with the way this mini turned out.  It's hanging on my cubicle wall at work.  

Normally, it's only the ladies that notice/comment on my minis but a few of the men have commented on this one!  

How are you doing with your resolutions this year?  Is anyone still keeping them?  So far, I am still hanging in there on my fabric diet.  The only fabric purchased in February was the backing for this mini (a very pretty green fabric with Celtic knot shamrocks), so I've still only purchased backings/borders/bindings and my total fabric expenditures this year are less than $20.  Woo hoo!

A Quilt for Amelia

My niece Amelia made her entrance into this world on March 2.  She's the first child for my brother Noah and his wife Jennifer.  Jennifer has two sons from an earlier marriage.

Noah is going to be an awesome father!

I knew they were going to have a girl, so the Grand Illusion mystery quilt by Bonnie Hunter was the quilt I made for Amelia.  I finished it the week before she was born and got it in the mail to Noah and Jennifer just in time!

It's hard to see the individual fabrics in this picture, but I've used some "meaningful" fabrics in this quilt.

I used fabric with music symbols to remind her of her father, who loves music.

I used fabric with cakes and cupcakes to remind her of her mother, who loves to bake and decorate cakes.

I used fabric with snowflakes to remind her of her aunts, uncles and cousins in New York.

And I used fabric with scissors to remind her of the aunt who made the quilt for her.

Over the three months I worked on this quilt, I thought of my little niece-to-be and stitched a lot of love into this quilt.  I told Noah that I hope in 10 years there will be nothing but a few strings left of this quilt.  I want her to play with the dogs on the floor with it and take it outside for picnics with her dolls.  I hope she snuggles under it when she needs to be comforted and I hope it keeps her warm.

I can't wait to meet her, but until I do, she has a piece of my heart nearby in this quilt.

World's Biggest Pincushion?

My friend and co-worker, Diana, celebrated her birthday in February.  She recently caught the quilting bug so I wanted to make her something sewing-related for her birthday.

I knew I wanted to make a pincushion and I knew I wanted it to have hexagons on it.  I found this pattern on the Moda site and thought it looked similar to what I had in mind.

I modified the pattern by not using the petals and by using a solid fabric for the side and bottom, but I did use hexagons for the top and I used the overall same size as the pattern called for.

Here's the finished product:

This pincushion is HUGE!!! It's 6 inches across and 3 inches high.  Diana can probably get 1000 pins in this pincushion!

Here's the pincushion from the top:

I added a package of  "button" topped pins from JoAnn's and one special "cupcake" pin made from polymer clay that I ordered online, but that arrived too late to photo before I had to give Diana the pincushion.

She loves it, so even though it's gigantic, I know it will get used.