Isabel Grace's Quilt

My niece was born this past July and of course she needed a quilt. Due to lack of funding, I challenged myself to make it entirely from my stash. I even sketched up a pattern to use them in. 

I added some mitered corners, which look especially fun when you use stripes.

In this picture and the one below you can see the quilting I did. It was sort of wavy lines with little loops. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it went. Granted, baby quilts go fast in general, but this seemed to blow by. I will definitely try this, and other variations again.

I wasn't able to finish it until after she was born, but to my credit, she did come 8 weeks early! Tommy brought it down to her earlier this month along with some other goodies. Girls are so fun to shop for! I had hoped to make some other things for her, but my own pregnancy exhaustion was in full swing.

Here is Isabel in the NICU with my mother in law. Isabel has been at home for quite a while now, and is doing great! We are so thankful to the Lord for his care over her and his kindness toward her mama's family.

Isabel with her mama.

Four for Friday

My dad, cooking us pancakes for dinner. A pillow I made for the guest room. Daniel's first day of Wee School. Daniel using skittles as body paint, courtesy of Aunt Linda.

Happy 4th Birthday Daniel!

Daniel's birthday started with Tommy taking him to get donuts! The lady at the local donut shop is a little overzealous and gives tons of free donuts!

Then once home, he got to open his presents from mom and dad. Puzzles were a big hit this year.

He also got a backpack to take into big church with us on Sunday mornings. Now that he is 4, he will be sitting in service with us.

That evening we went to a local church for a Seeds Family Worship concert. Daniel didn't know what to make of it at first, but he warmed up quickly when he saw his friend Olivia dancing.

On Saturday we had a party with his friends at a local park. Daniel requested a Spiderman cake! I did the white icing, and Tommy did the rest!

We had a simple lunch and enjoyed our time with friends.

It has been so nice having my cousin close by at DBU. We have gotten to see alot of Kaitlin and her boyfriend Jesse over the last month.

Daniel was very excited to open his presents! I think we're about to have a hot wheel recruit. We probably have close to 100 cars, and I think not all of them will make the cut!

Daniel also loved this Cars sticker book!

Happy Birthday Daniel! We love you and we thank God for bringing you to our family!

It's...

Another Boy!!!

We had a sonogram about a week and a half ago, and found a healthy little boy in there!

We went out later that night to buy his first outfit and a Little Brother shirt.

And I dug out some of Daniel's old clothes that will work for this baby too. I'm glad I ended up keeping them. It is sweet remembering when he wore the same outfits and thinking about how tiny he was. Even though I feel like my bump isn't all that big, I keep imagining this baby as nice and fat!

Anna Rae's Quilt

My sweet friend Rachel recently had her first little girl, Anna Rae. I made this quilt for Anna and actually had it delivered before she was born!

I used this Charming Stars Quilt pattern and left the sashing off. I was able to make it all from my stash, always nice! My grandmom gave me a stack of charm squares, though very few (if any) were actually squares. I don't know where they were from, they don't seem to be from one line, even the textures and types of fabrics are different. The backing fabric was also from my grandmom, and I still have a good bit of it left. Unfortunately I neglected to get a picture of it, but it was not pieced, which was super nice.

I've been brushing up on some embroidery, and really enjoyed stitching each of these blocks. Here are some up close:

He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,

    and its people are like grasshoppers. 

He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, 

    and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

Big Brother's hand!

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

I am so excited for Rachel, and look forward to watching Anna grow!

Kait's Quilt: Finished

I was able to finish Kaitlin's quilt in time for her graduation party. This quilt was my first time using a long arm machine and I've gotta say the jury is still out. It was faster than my home machine, but I had some serious thread breaking issues that were really discouraging. I do plan on giving it another go sometime as it did turn out really well.

That little star might be my favorite

A pieced back because I never plan for enough fabric.

I love how the embroidered label turned out, it might become a regular method.

Process: Kait's Quilt

I thought it would be fun to show you the process I went through while making this quilt. I had a specific pattern in mind when I bought this fabric from Connecting Threads, but quickly realized my math had failed me and I didn't have enough charm squares to do what I wanted to. 

Fabric arrived the end of February

The fabrics I used in this quilt are in the stack on the right

I got to sketching out some designs by the beginning of April, with crayons. Oh yeah.

layout of the first block, compare this to the bottom block above

first block completed

layout of the second block

This is where I realized I sewed the first block together wrong and knew it had to be fixed

second block, and first block fixed

the three large blocks

trying different layouts

two medium blocks

more layout ideas

with two additional small blocks

not sure about this layout

filling in the negative spaces with black

All the blocks are together

Just needed a little more black around two sides

working on a little embroidered label 

Hopefully in the next week I'll show you the completed quilt! I really enjoyed making this one as it was so different from most of the others I've made.