Cuddle Quilt

I recently finished a new quilt for my wonderful mother in law, Lynne.  She intends to use it in her office for the children she sees in her therapy practice, but if I were her, I'd be sorely tempted to keep this quilt all to myself.

The top of the quilt is made with a selection of Anna Maria Horner's Folksy Flannels line and the border and sashing are solid white flannel.  You may remember me starting this quilt back the day before Christmas.  I know I said at the time that I was going to keep it, but luckily I have enough fabric left over to make a whole 'nother one for me.

I backed the quilt using some fleece I bought at JoAnn's and since it's suppossed to be cuddly and soft (and because I wasn't sure how well hand-sewing a bias binding to fleece would go) I wrapped the fleece around to the front and sewed it down to finish the quilt.  Since the fleece won't fray, I left a narrow raw edge that will curl up and look cute when the quilt is washed.

The quality control department has given the cuddle quilt its official stamp of approval and I will be shipping it off to Wisconsin promptly.  And, I'll be adding "make another flannel and fleece quilt" to my ever-growing list of things to do.

Feeling a little selfish...

Well, it's Christmas Eve tomorrow and instead of crazily wrapping presents or baking from-scratch cookies for Santa, I started a quilt.  It's not even a gift.  It's for us to use.  I hope to have it finished to put under the tree with our Christmas Day goodies, but there are no guarantees.  Needless to say, I'm feeling more than a little selfish.  Especially because there are gifts that I need to finish for my family before heading home next week.  But, I keep telling myself that I will have time to sew those on Christmas day and on Sunday and even tomorrow.  And, I do.  But my mom taught me that before doing fun stuff, I should always make sure the stuff I need to do is finished.  In any case, I am pretty excited about this quilt.

I decided to do the Stacked Coins quilt from Joelle Hoverson's Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts.

I'm using some Anna Maria Horner Folksy Flannels I found at Quilt Home fabrics.  I'm almost reluctant to give out this info, because Quilt Home has so many gorgeous fabrics that are out of print still in stock, plus lots of new fabrics that don't sell out at the drop of a hat.

Anyway, I have all of my fabric for the quilt top cut and I'm sewing my coin stacks together.  I chose a white flannel for the sashing and border because I loved how it made all of the colors in Anna Maria's designs really stand out.  

For the binding, I'm going to use the same white flannel and for the backing, I have a gorgeous aqua fleece that I bought from Joann's.  The finished quilt is going to be sooo snuggly and soft and I am having visions of Nate, Pete, and I cuddling up under it to watch Netflix movies as a family.  I realize I sound slightly delusional and since it's Christmas, I'm okay with that.

My Christmas wish for everyone who reads this is that you are able to put your feet up and relax this year.  Thanks for reading and have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Love,

Lisa

Embroidery + Quilting = Magic

FINALLY!  I finished the Magic Quilt I started nearly two months ago.  I love it.

The quilt is a gift for a special little girl who needs a little help keeping nightmares away.  Her mom thought she would like to be able to go to sleep covered up in all of her favorite things.

One of Malia's favorite things is the swings at the park.  To make these, I used a fairly basic split stitch and back stitch, but for the grass, I brought my ends to the front of the quilt and knotted them so the floss would look super soft and tufty.  My spellchecker says "tufty" isn't a word, but I think it's wrong.

This is a little family portrait.  Malia, Rene, Danny, and Keenan.  They are such a cute family!  For Malia, Danny, and Keenan's hair, I used french knots to evoke curls.

Curly red hair, cute red dress, super fun musical--it can only mean Annie.  The best part of embroidering this square was all of the memories it brought back for me.  I totally played Annie in my high school production!  It's one of my favorite musicals.

Macaroni and cheese.  Delicious.

Rene's parents live in Arizona and Malia loves getting to fly out and visit.

Altogether, this quilt has a whimsy and charm.  I hope that Malia loves it and that it keeps all of the bad dreams far away.

A little magic...

Sometimes quilts can be magical, can't they?  This confection is a Christmas gift for a little girl who is having some trouble sleeping, so the magic of this quilt will be to keep the nightmares away.  I know it would keep mine away if it were on my bed.