Monday, April 25, 2011

Nickel I Spy #3

This I Spy quilt is for Lily. Lily turns 4 this week. We have 6 grandchildren turning 4 in a year's time.  From September 19, 2006 through September 18, 2007, my husband's 4 daughters, my daughter and my son's wife all had children!  I think that's probably some kind of record.


Lily has a baby sister, Lucille or Lulu as Lily calls her so I thought it would be nice for them to have matching I Spy quilts.  By matching, I mean all of the I Spy squares are the same in each quilt but are arranged differently so they can play a matching game when Lulu gets old enough.


As you can see, I added their names in the center of the quilt.  I fused the letters of their names on and did a small zigzag stitch around each letter.  I used a different color scheme for each quilt.  The same fabric was used for the name, the backing and binding on each quilt-pink for Lily and lavender for Lucy Violet.

Linda of L&R Designs did a cute flower and loops quilting design that really added to the "girlyness" of the quilts.  Here's a close-up of the design on Lily's quilt.   A pastel variegated thread was used on Lily's quilt and a lavender thread was used on Lucy's.  Two quilts done, many more to go!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Easter Eggs quilt

Just in time for Easter with a week to spare!  I say this with surprise because I too often finish projects late or give up on them when I know I can't complete them by the time I want to use them or give them as gifts. 

This Easter Eggs quilt just popped into my head last week. As I sat staring, with a basket of odd pieces of trim sitting in my line of vision, I came up with the idea to "decorate" some nickel squares.  This turned into decorating "egg" blocks and my Easter Eggs quilt was born.  Funny how the design process works sometimes!  Now I have a table topper to decorate my table for Easter or maybe I'll put it on the wall and use it as a wall hanging.



To decorate the "eggs", I used scraps of ribbon and rickrack of various sizes and even some scraps of chenille strips.  I left a few eggs without any embellishment when I felt the pattern of the fabric was enough.  A fat quarter was used in the center and was the color inspiration for the fabrics and trims.  This project would be a good use for all those decorative stitches on my machine that I never use.  Maybe sometime I'll decorate some eggs that way.  Here are some close-ups of a few of the eggs-





As I was looking at this quilt on my table, I decided that Easter Egg coasters would be cute so I made this one.

            Easter Eggs quilt as a table topper                                  Easter Eggs coaster