Traditional Baby Quilt

Now that my most recent quilt has reached its owner, I can share it here. It's a little more traditional than I usually go, but it's still slightly modern thanks to lots of solids and some fun, subtle stripes. I stuck with my new favorite all-over free motion quilting. 

On the back, I used the same fabric as I put on the back of Elliott's quilt. I'm hoping Sir E's happy vibes will flow to the new sweet baby boy who's going to be snuggling this quilt.

I love that my dear friend is going to be a mama and that this quilt will be along for the ride. Can't wait till this baby boy arrives! XO

Modern Hexagon Quilt for Miss L

My most recent quilt was made with lots of love for my bestie's little girl. It was my first quilt incorporating hexagons (done by machine!) and one of the rare quilts where I had the vision in my mind and went about creating it without ever drawing out the details of the quilt.

I love the juxtaposition of the modern pattern (hexes, mostly solid fabric, and lots of negative space) with the antique feel of the "crunch" from the overall stipple quilting. It's a little bigger than crib size to make a more comfortable toddler bed quilt.

I backed it in fabric that I bought in New Zealand (and then spotted in my local fabric shop - doh!). The backing fabric was the inspiration for the fabric I used on the front.

Sweet Louisa, I hope that you and your family love and enjoy your quilt for years to come!

Bright Baby Girl Quilt

This past weekend, I got to hand off my newest quilt to its new owner. She is bright, confident, feisty, feminine, and unapologetic. I mean all of those things in the nicest possible way, and she is going to be a wonderful mother to her sweet Adelina.

In that spirit, I tried to make a quilt that embodied the same character and ended up with this:

The quilt top came together remarkably quickly thanks to strip piecing and a few cutting shortcuts. 

For the quilting, I wanted to try something different. I attempted to recreate the pattern from the backing fabric. It's imperfect (isn't that the true beauty of quilts?), but I'm pleased with how it turned out. 

A World of Support for Charlotte: A Modern Around the World Quilt

My most recent quilt is now in the hands of a little girl who I've never met. Her name is Charlotte, and she is the niece of my dear friend, Misha. She also happens to be waging an incredibly brave battle against liver cancer that started when she was all of 15 months old. I've been following her story here and haven't been able to get her and her family off of my mind. So I made Charlotte a quilt to give her comfort during her treatments and a place to have a picnic when she's not.

I chose to do a modern take on the traditional around the world pattern (inspired by this quilt) to represent all of the support around the world for Charlotte and her family. I went with bright rainbow solids and a fun Japanese kitty print for the back.

Keep fighting, sweet Charlotte!

Pinned It & Did It: Easy DIY Duplo Table

Even though there never seem to be enough hours in the day (or night!), I can't help but continue to add projects to my to-do list. 

I thought I'd share a recent (super easy) success. This one was inspired long, long ago by this pin (original source) and turned out to be incredibly easy. How easy?

Lack + Gorilla Glue + Duplo Plate

I simply glued the plate to the top of the table (before attaching the legs) and weighed it down with the world's most expensive paperweights overnight. Be careful to go easy on the Gorilla glue and not get too close to the edges. 

A certain lil' lady has really enjoyed building on her Duplo table, as have her friends who have come over to play while it's been out. 

 

Have you done any really easy but really rewarding projects recently? 

Christmas Squared: A Modern Christmas Log Cabin Quilt

A month or two ago, I decided that I wanted to make a Christmas quilt to kick off my goal of making one seasonal quilt per year. I thought it would be fun to have a special throw to get out just for the month of December each year, a comfy place for us to curl up and establish some great memories. 

I settled on a pretty simple design that would allow me to use strip piecing. I tried to choose fabric that would be timeless and grow with us as a family. Every quilt that I make teaches me a lesson, and this one taught me to follow my fabric instincts. I'm so glad that I did! 

The size of the quilt is a fair bit larger than intended. I wanted a generous throw size and ended up with one that is longer and just slightly narrower than a standard twin bed quilt. (It's pictured resting on a queen bed.) This is about twice as big as any other quilt I've made to date. About a week before I started, I got a new sewing machine (merry Christmas to me!), and there is no way that I could have done it without my new machine's 11-inch neck! 

Enough quilting mumbo-jumbo - here are some photos: 

The quilting on this beast is rather simple and quite imperfect. As I was quilting, I debated whether I should go back and fix the mistakes to make it a little closer to perfect, but I decided against it. Here's the thing: like a piece of writing, a quilt should be tailored to its audience and purpose. This is meant to be a background for family memories, not a show piece. I'm currently in the season of my life where perfection is a thing of the past and good enough is the motto of the year decade. Hopefully I'll one day treasure those untouched mistakes as I curl up in the quilt while I wait for our teenagers to come home or wait for the grandkids to arrive.

For now, I'll treasure being able to lay down our first year of memories with this quilt.

And with that, goodbye 2014. 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from us and ours to you and yours!

Today I'm stopping by to share a few of the many special things we've done to celebrate the Christmas season (besides keeping the radio tuned to the 24-hour Christmas music station...much to George's dismay).

Visited Santa:

Took our annual family photo at the poinsettia tree (2012, 2013):

Posed for professional family photos:

Picked out Elliott's first Christmas tree:

Decorated the tree:

Redirected Madeleine to decorate her tree (much more successful this year):

Celebrated with our PEPS Group (2.5 years and counting):

Dressed the kiddos in matching Christmas jammies:

Visited a Christmas light display with some of our friends:

Enjoyed our out-of-town friends:

Hope your holiday season has been as fulfilling!

In lieu of tomorrow's Friday I'm in Love, picture me loving on the precious faces featured above. 

Few Festive Decorations

I enjoy decorating our home for Christmas and - at the risk of sounding like my mother - it seems a shame that not many people get to see it in person. To counter that, I'm sharing a bit of my decorations here.

Last year, I went a bit overboard. Our 2014 decorations are a mix of old and new with nothing too complicated. I tried to keep it simple and limit the stress associated with creating, displaying, and tearing down decorations while still bringing a bit of holiday cheer to our home. 

Our tree is up in the formal livingroom again. It's smaller than last year (and definitely not as nice of a noble fir as we've had in the past), but we managed to fill the entire tree with just lights, an extended felt ball garland, and sentimental ornaments. No filler bulbs this year! 

Christmas trees are often a topic of discussion amongst parents of toddlers. Our rule is that anything that can be reached can be touched...with one finger. Madeleine has responded well to this (this year) because it doesn't feel so off-limits and, therefore, attractive, and she is still able to indulge her curiosity (mostly) without damaging things. I also strategically decorated the tree so that ornaments on the lower half of the tree are unbreakable, fixable, or replaceable. 

Even this guy loves to look at the lights and grab at ornaments. He doesn't seem to mind that the crazy thing is drying out at record speed. 

Our formal livingroom mantel is bright and cheerful without a lot of effort. I wanted to highlight the new piece of art (depicting the location of our wedding) but still make it feel like Christmas. I think that the new felt ball tree, our stockings, and those gorgeous Glassybabies (in new fern, happiness, dolphin, and crayola) do just that! 

I added letters to our stockings this year (inspired by this). I don't love the scale, but they'll be fine placeholders until I find the perfect font and size. And, yes, our initials spell out a word. It wasn't intentional, but we're embracing it! 

In the livingroom where we spend a lot of our time, I've dialed things back quite a bit. This year, I'm displaying a few ornaments on this awesome driftwood tree my mom and stepdad made for me, and I've reused an older bunting (tutorial here).

I stole the Santa photo idea from a friend. Each year, we'll get to look back at the previous years' visits to Santa while adding a new one to the mix. It's a little hard for me to believe that this is already our third Christmas with kiddos!

For the shelves, I pulled out some old favorites, including my Joy to the World. This will always be special to me because I made it shortly after I found out I was pregnant with Madeleine, while George was out snowboarding and I had an afternoon alone with my thoughts. 

Even though Christmas is just one day, I enjoy our special decorations all month long. Hopefully you've enjoyed seeing them, too! 

A Pinterest Christmas: Scrabble Ornament & Paint-Dipped Pinecones

Welcome back to A Pinterest Christmas!

I have two projects to share with you. The first one is inspired by this pin and was free thanks to some Scrabble tiles I had left over from making this for George a couple Father's Days ago.

My biggest challenge was keeping the Gorilla glue from showing on the front, and I found the best results from standing up the tiles while drying the glue.

My second project was a long time coming and remarkably fast. I've had my eye on this pin for ages and intended to carry it out last year when I ended up making these pinecones. I used a few different methods to get the paint on the pinecones before hanging them to dry.

This project comes with a few words of warning. When choosing paint and cone, be aware of the size of the opening of the paint can versus size of the cone and of the amount of paint in the can. I used some leftovers from our garage (red from this makeover and white test paint from our exterior trim) and things didn't always line up as well as intended. Also, be aware that the paint makes the cones heavy and can leave paint drips off the cones as they dry (not just on the floor but also on the cone).

They turned out like this:

Have you checked out Michelle's glitter pinecones? Maybe I'll try those next year.

Be sure to check out what all the other ladies are making this week and participate yourself by commenting on one of our blogs or linking back to us. 

[Emerald City Diaries | Greg & Maggi |  The Gilbertson Family | The Pena Family | This Grey House | Without A Doubt]

A Pinterest Christmas: Dried Bean Wreath

Welcome to week #2 of Pinterest Christmas! This week's project was loosely inspired by this yummy wreath and this Christmas tree.

It turned out to be a really inexpensive one because I reused a foam wreath form from a couple of years ago. With many sticks of hot glue, a bag and a third of dry beans, and a few burned finger tips, I covered the foam wreath about two-thirds of the way around. After I removed as many hot glue strings as possible and filled in as many gaps as possible with beans, I applied three or four coats of metallic spraypaint.

For a closer look:

Be sure to check out what the other ladies are making this week and participate yourself by commenting on one of our blogs or linking back to us. 

[Emerald City Diaries | Greg & Maggi |  The Gilbertson Family | The Pena Family | This Grey House | Without A Doubt]