More thrift store finds

I'm a sucker for rough-and-tumble homemade quilts, like the baby clothes quilt I got at the Fremont Market a few weeks ago. So today, when we were rooting around looking for next season's toddler winter coats at Goodwill, I took a quick spin through the crib bedding hangers to see if there was anything home made. And we came home with this little pretty, for about five bucks:



Isn't it sweet? It's lumpy and bumpy, the fabrics aren't all cotton, it's obviously been chewed and worn, the corners are a little off, and the label is on the front rather than the back -- but I think it's adorable. And the border and back are covered in chickens. :) How can you not like that?

I wonder whose this was and why it ended up there.

Mini quilt giveaway!

I hit my 100,000th visit yesterday -- and to belatedly celebrate I'm giving away this pretty little mini-quilt, made by me. It's approximately 16 x 18, all cotton batiks, and it's waiting for a good home!

Here's the front:

Look - it's stippled! And yes, you're seeing pins around the binding -- it's not quite finished yet.

And here's the back. The binding isn't sewn down on the back yet, which is why this looks kind of strange:


To win this little pretty, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post between now and Friday. On Saturday I'll choose a random winner and post the winner's identity!

A few notes:

• You may comment as many times as you want. Each comment gets one name put in the hat. :)
  
• If you post an entry about this giveaway on your blog with a link back here and let me know that you've posted, I'll give you two extra entries in the drawing.
  
• Please leave email contact info if you're set no-reply, and be sure to check back on Thursday to see if you're the winner!

Thanks for visiting! I know this is small potatoes in the blog world, my 100K visits, but it sure feels like a lot to me!

Another quilt finished, another quilt begun

Just finished the second of the heart doll quilts I've been making lately for Sofie's little friends -- this one has been sitting on my "get to it" pile for several months lately and I'm glad to have it finally done! As always, finishing it was no big deal once I got it sandwiched -- I got 90% of the quilting done in a single naptime, with a little bit of handstitching and sewing on the binding that evening. Added the label today and it's finished!! Yay!

Front:


Back:


The back isn't really pieced -- it's a single piece of fabric that looks like it's made of tiny blocks. My machine quilting is slowly getting better - I'm actually really happy with the wavy meandering line in the inner border and the tight parallel lines in the outer border on this one. And the hearts didn't shrink or distort in the wash as much as the ones on Molly's quilt, because I hand quilted a heart shape inside the border of each of them, which seemed to stabilize them. Live and learn.

And -- I'm extra excited because I'm signed up for a machine quilting class on Monday the 9th at which I'll get some expert help at learning how to quilt freehand on my machine. Which should make a huge difference in what I can do! I can't wait.

Being all caught up on the mystery quilt for the moment, I've also started working on My Blue Heaven, from quiltville. The first step of which involves sewing together SIX HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX triangles. Ouch. I've got 400 cut and about 200 sewed. But Brett's going away this week for four days and I'll have my evenings wide open to obsessively quilt after Sofie goes to bed, and I figured this will be a good project to work on while he's off gallavanting about at his high school reunion. I'm thinking of it as my own little quilting retreat.

And here's my take on what the mystery quilt is going to look like -- we find out the next step, which should be laying all the rows out, somewhere around the 9th. But I had to lay out my blocks and see what it looked like:



It's REALLY bright but I like it! This is my first truly scrappy quilt -- in that all of the little four squares and other small blocks that make up the larger pieces are just random colors from my scrap basket, evened out by the red, blue, and orange yardage that repeats throughout the quilt. I had a hard time with the randomness at the beginning but I'm officially hooked on scrap quilting and will be making a lot more things from strips. If you look closely at the little squares and triangles above, there's everything in there from neons to darks to christmas fabric. Look how it all blends together so nicely!

This is only about half of the blocks in the quilt top -- I ran out of room laying them out and just added the half and quarter blocks around it to simulate what the final top might look like. What do you think?

Can you believe it?

I think the tulip quilt is lost in the mail. The post office estimated 5 to 10 days for delivery to its destination in South America, and it's been 15 with no sign of it showing up.

Oddly enough, it doesn't look like my churn dash quilt has reached its recipient either. That was only going to the east coast and should have taken about three or four days. It's been twelve.

I mailed them two different days. Doesn't it seem unlikely that two quilts mailed two different days would both get lost?

Hopefully at least one of them has arrived and the person just hasn't posted or emailed about it. I'd hate for the tulip quilt, in particular, to be lost.

*worryworry*

Second swap quilt finished

Here's the second of my swap quilts that have to go out in April -- all finished and ready to be shipped, today or tomorrow:



Looks a little wrinkly, doesn't it? I need to figure out how to use my new macro lens so I can get better closeup detail on these kind of pictures.

And here's the back -- which isn't really period fabric like the rest of it but the colors go and I liked it.



Two other bits of news -- yesterday Brett let me escape the house for a few hours to go fabric shopping and see a movie. I went and saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was really great. I never used to like going to see movies on my own, but since Sofie was born it's all I can do not to run around in the lobby twirling and shouting "I'm ALONE! I'm BY MYSELF! Hallelujah!"

Lesson: If you see someone alone in the movie theater chortling and giggling before the movie even starts, rest assured it's a mom of a toddler out for a few hours of peace.

Second, last night around eleven, I closed the catdoor and headed upstairs to bed while Brett finished up some stuff downstairs. When I got up there I noticed that Max and Phoenix, our boy cats, were acting a little odd. Not upset, just odd. They were... very alert. And sitting in places they usually don't sit. And they both seemed really interested in one particular armchair that sits at the top of the stairs.

I finally put two and two together and realized something was under there. Fearing the worst (rat? possum?), I got down on the floor, lifted up the blanket that hides the underneath of the chair from view, and found this tiny little gray and white cat blinking back at me. Blinkblinkblink.

I called Brett up and we soon figured out from his collar that it was Dexter, who lives down the street a ways. He must've come in to explore and then gotten trapped under the chair by our overly watchful duo. We carefully peeled this very freaked out little cat out from under there and let him out for the night.

Bon voyage, Dexter. I don't think he'll be coming back anytime soon.

Other news

Sofie's doing much better -- she's eating pretty good meals again and playing and almost back to normal, except for some remaining digestive issues and the fact that she tires out really easily. But it's so nice to see smiles again!

In quilting news, I made this top last week for the doll quilt swap I'm in, which is also due at the end of this month. This is tiny -- just 12 inches wide.

I've never made a miniature quilt this small before -- the little rectangles in each churn dash square are only a quarter inch wide. I ended up hand piecing most of it, partly because my machine was away getting service but also because it was all just so freaking small and hard to handle.


This has to get sandwiched, backed, quilted, bound and out the door by April 26th. But it'll be a quick one to quilt -- not going to do anything very fancy to it except in the border.

The tulip quilt went off in the mail today. It'll be five to ten days before it gets where it's going. Keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't get lost!

Tulip quilt done

Well, the tulip quilt is finally done, and will soon be off to a foreign land far, far away. It's hard to let this one go -- I really think this may be the nicest thing I've ever made. But it's quilted -- both hand and machine -- and bound, and labeled, and washed, and I can't think of a thing more to do to it.

Even Brett is trying to get me to keep it. Except I just don't have anything else I can send for the swap, and it's due by the end of the month.

Here's the final product:


With the strange, sky-blue and orange batik I used to back and bind it showing:


Close-up in which I was hoping you could see the little butterflies I hand-quilted in each corner of the white square -- but it didn't come out very well in this picture:


And I finally got some printer fabric and made a real label for it:


I've blotted out the recipients name in this pic since it's a BIG SURPRISE. :)

As soon as Sofie's well enough to drag to the post office, this will be on its way to its new home.