a lack of confidence

I spent 2.5 hours in a quilt shop yesterday.
Normally, I'm in and out in about 30 minutes-- I make decisions pretty quickly. But yesterday, I needed to pick out fabric for the Carolyn quilt. I decided on an easy pinwheel pattern from Material Obsession called Cowboy Baby. Since the quilt in the book was tiny, about 40" x 48", and I have limited time, I decided to make my blocks twice as large (you know how I love the big blocks).
But I had the hardest time picking out the fabric. My eyes always go immediately towards stripes, dots, brights, solids and contemporary prints. I knew that those wouldn't do for a lodge-inspired quilt living in the Adirondacks. This is probably the first time ever that I've been continuously second-guessing my choices. I had a lot of help from the women at the shop, which was great (though one thought I was nuts for not putting dark binding on every quilt I make, but that's another story).
Since the quilt is surrounded by a large border, I had help picking out the print used as the border in this pattern as my inspiration.


I haven't bought the border yet because I want to cut it parallel to the selvedge as opposed to the way it's shown in the picture, and I need to know the length first. It's actually pretty cute, with half moons and red flowers on a dark blue background. Most of the fabric I picked for the middle of the quilt is from the same line, American Primer:
I'm not in love with this, though I did like it much more next to the border. Maybe I just need to wait and see.

Baby M

I definitely took my time starting and stopping with this one, but here it is:
I've sewn the binding on one side already. I also decided to try a new-to-me technique for the binding. Typically, I do the French-fold binding, but decided to shake things up and try flat binding. I think I like the flat binding better, because I usually get annoyed at my iron when I try to get each side to line up with the center fold. I'll see how it looks after I wash it, but so far so good. This is the easiest explanation I've found regarding French vs. flat binding. Thoughts?

Anyway, this is inspired by Fanciful Flowers in Material Obsession. I made it smaller, and since I ran out of the brown fabric for the corner pieces (click to enlarge), I didn't continue those little squares into the border. This was my first time with raw-edge applique, and there are some missteps, but I'm overall pretty happy with this. I stippled it. I feel like I never get to play with pink, so this was fun. All of the fabric came from my stash, too. The center of each non-applique block is from Farmer's Market, and there's a little bit of everything in there. I'd like to maybe make a quilt entirely out of the pieced blocks. The blocks are huge (about 18" square).

Here's the back:The pale pink has a white polka dot, and the fun flowered fabric was a Hobby Lobby bargain.

Baby M hasn't yet been born, so I'm going to hold onto it until she is (to confirm it's really a girl). Baby M is the second child of a good college friend of mine, who I don't get to see very often. I wasn't quilting when her oldest was born, so I think I might have to make one for her, too.
Someday, when I have babies, I hope to have a daughter if for no other reason than to sew for her. I don't know many crafters who prefer to sew for boys.

Old Red Barn Co. quiltalong

Like others in blogland, I decided that this looked too good to pass up. I got my fabric today:
It's for a little girl, and it's a lot of Clementine by Moda, Lila Turner, and a couple of others mixed in. I love pink, orange and green together. My fabric is all cut and I'm ready to go.
In the meantime, I'm still busy making nine-patches (here's where I start to lose steam with that project) and I'm also quilting a baby quilt today.
It feels good to be back to quilting and away from garment making-- I'm much more confident.

material obsession: fanciful flowers

From the Material Obsession book, I decided to try one of the patterns out for (another) college friend of mine who is expecting a baby girl. I picked the Fanciful Flowers design-- one they call "advanced".I really don't like doing applique by hand, and after one disaster of a practice block, alleviated my problem by machine stitching very close to the flowers' edges, and using a lightweight fusible interfacing for all of the flower parts and the back of the white. Here's a picture of the huge (18 1/2" square) blocks that I've made so far:What can I say, Butch is a good quilt model.

I didn't work at all on the Lotus quilt today; it's been raining and I really needed to work with some fun happy colors. This is a total stash/scrap quilt. Some Amy Butler, some Sandi Henderson, some of this and some of that.

In other news, here's what else has been happening at Park Ave.:

That's our new chandelier and our new "Midas Gold" faux tin ceiling. This is our foyer, directly above where I took the first picture. The crown molding isn't up in this picture, but it is in real life.

material obsession

Here's my first Park Avenue Sweat Shop book review. It will take a lot for me to actually buy a book-- I'm a giant library champion, and when it comes to craft books, I'd rather spend my money on fabric or fun tools. So this book, Material Obsession: Modern Quilts with Traditional Roots by Kathy Doughty and Sarah Fielke, came to me from my local library. I think that quilt books *can* be judged (at least a little) by the cover. And I like this cover, a lot. There are 23 (!) different quilt projects inside, arranged from very easy to advanced, and I like that they put the obligatory "quilting basics" section in the back-- having the basics covered, I like to get right to the good stuff.

The fabric combinations are really refreshing-- one of my pet peeves is seeing quilt books showing quilts done in all one line. Of course those look great, when they were designed to go together. Seeing fabrics from all over come together and mingle is much more special-- to me, at least.

Just about all of these are hand-quilted, and some have applique that looks kind of optional (on some blocks, but not all) which is also inspiring to maybe try.

My favorites: Retro Starburst (easy); Out the Window (intermediate); Fanciful Flowers (advanced) and Dotty for Dresden (advanced, and also the gorgeous quilt on the cover).