FO: Warm Baby

Aloo!  I got my quilting mojo jump-started with a crazy deadline for a pretty big quilt.  It had stalled when I was trying to make one for a little baby girl who was due in January, but the layout and colors just would not gel:

Bwuh?

It was really bad.  I was trying to go off of the white squares with the sketchy circles, but it just was not working. 
 

Guh?

It's a pretty fabric, I swear.  This one is probably scuttled for good.  

So eventually I finished a twin-size quilt in two weeks or something, then scrapped this whole thing and started over with something HAPPY, GOD DAMN IT: 

Much better!  Probably.  Whatever, I don't even know anymore.  The world was looking like this at the time:

Which is cool for a Dour-Peoples-on-the-third-moon-of-Jupiter vibe for a day or two, but we were on about month 4 of the whole thing and I needed some orange and pink.  

And then I needed to scrape together some spending money for the backing fabric, because while I had some pieces big enough (and, come to think of it, could have just pieced something that would have looked okay), the colors weren't right. 

Turns out the print on the backing is verrrry light.

I'm developing a huge stack of charm squares for making more of these simple little baby quilts, and along with this backing I bought several other longer bits that should make nice backings for other such quilts.  These quilts are just under a yard wide, so about a yard and a quarter is enough to back one with some fabric left over.  Leftovers are very important for several grandiose plans that are hatching. 

Bunneh!

I handed this one off to one of the happy parents well after the little one showed up, as unceremoniously as ever.  (I worked for many hours on this!  Then I put it in a paper bag!  Here!)  I'm not sure it's to the parents' taste, but it is a) not the color of mud, and b) at least more cohesive than that first attempt, so.  

Happy crafting!

FO: Red Tumbler

Finished in time for the big birthday:

This quilt used the same layout as the orange one I made a couple of years ago for the older kid.  Each tumbler measures 6" at the longer base and is 6" tall.  I laid out all the squares on my design wall and across the couch a long time ago, then sewed the rows together and put it aside.  Wish I had noticed the long run of darker reds starting in the upper right corner.  There are a couple of things I'm not psyched about in terms of the layout of this one, but if I'd slowed down to contemplate all of that, it wouldn't have been done on time, so better done than perfect. 

The back has three rows of half-size tumblers inserted toward the top.  I like to make the back asymmetrical so that you can tell which end is the top of the quilt as you're putting it on the bed. 

Like the previous one, I quilted in the ditch over the whole quilt, then echoed each ditch line twice on either side. 

Closeup of quilting on back

For the batting I used Quilter's Dream Wool in a twin size, which had some terrible reviews on Fabric.com because of issues they seem to have had when some of their product didn't get some part of the finishing process.  I used that batting in the other tumbler quilt and have been really happy with it, so I decided to give it a chance and resigned myself to ripping the quilt apart and re-doing if necessary.  Luckily, it went through its first wash just fine, and I don't anticipate any problems with it.  It's a pretty high loft and is very warm, and the orange quilt has broken in very nicely.  

Tune in next time for a finished baby quilt.  Here's a little preview of what I'm working on now:

Happy crafting!