It's all of us!: quilting

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Baby Clothes Quilt: Making progress!

I'm making progress, pinky swear! It's been a much slower-going project than I anticipated. Probably for a number of reasons... here are a few of them, in no particular order:

1. I'm finding that some things are hard to actually cut. I could cut up onesies and pj's all day long, but those stinkin cute little dresses? Rough.
2. I like to work on other things, too!
3. When I decide something is officially outgrown (which I hate to do! and usually, things stay in the drawer a bit longer than they actually should...), it gets tossed into a bin in the closet in our master bedroom. Lucca goes to bed at 7:30. So anything I haven't brought downstairs early in the day is off limits for evening working-on. Boo.
4. I'm trying to be detail-oriented in the cutting, making sure to save the trims, patches, pockets, and other cute details. This adds minutes to the cutting.
5. Oh yeah, I have 2 kids to take care of and dinner and laundry and all that other housefrau stuff.

Just a peek at my work as of late:

dresses! so hard to cut into these pretty little layers!

stack one!

stack 2!

feet!


not sure how I'm going to incorporate these into the quilt... but just look at this face! how could i NOT let him join the quilt party?!

I'm sure there has to be a point where I just have to start laying things out and sewing rows together. It seems like I could let this go on forevs, since both girls will continue to keep outgrowing their clothes!! I have to start somewhere, though... and maybe it would be nice for the set-up of the quilt squares to be sort of chronological! I hadn't thought of that until I typed it, to be honest. Like the rings on a tree. Yeah, I'm getting really out there now. But for really reals... the center would be the newborn, 3 months, 3-6 months clothes, and the squares surrounding it would be 6-12-ish... and then for Raina there would be another section around it with some big kid pieces. I like it!

My next post on this quilt will have real actual pictures of squares completed and sewn together into rows and/or blocks. I wrote it down, and now it's a pact (between you and me, blog readers! Hold me to it!)

My goal is to have these done in time for them to not include t-shirts with pictures of boy bands on them! :)

Thursday, April 26, 2012

A Quilt Comes Home

One of the many treasures uncovered while cleaning out my grandparents home... this quilt. I started sewing it with my Gram when I was in middle school! We cut the squares, sewed them together, picked out a back, added some batting and basted the whole thing together. And it sat like that for 16 years.

Until today!

I opened it all the way up... for the first time in almost 2 decades... and spread it out on my (dark and messy) living room floor. It's dark because it's naptime, and it's messy because we have 2 kids living here :). I tempted fate by tiptoe-ing around this sleepy face to spread out and re-pin the sides. It was successful! I used to be able to do anything at naptime - make dinner, go down to the basement to do laundry, even sew at my machine with Lucca in the next room. Now she wakes up if I uncross my legs too quickly! So lately naptime hasn't been a very productive time for me. I cut patterns, lay things out, take pictures... but even typing sometimes disturbs her. Some days I really really really wish I could get some sewing done, or start dinner, or even check the mail... but she wont be a baby forever, and I know I'll miss these sweet days... so I just do what I can :).