I Think She Likes It!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! My husband and I travelled to Indiana to spend Christmas with my family. It was really cold with no snow to enjoy but we still had a great time with both my immediate and extended families.

While I was home, I had the opportunity to give my cousin the quilt I’d made for her new baby.  Well, semi-new.  Baby Allie was actually born in July but I hadn’t been home to meet her yet so in my mind that still makes her new.

Everyone was really impressed that I had made the quilt by myself and couldn’t believe this was the first thing I’d quilted.  My cousin and baby Allie really seemed to like it!

I told my cousin that I didn’t want this quilt to be folded up in the closet unused to keep it nice.  I want baby Allie to be dragging it around the house and playing on it.  Allie even got some play time on it that afternoon!

           

It was really neat seeing something I made being used and enjoyed by someone else and I’m sure this won’t be the last quilt that I make as a gift.

Hope you had a wonderful and safe holiday and a happy new year!

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Sunshine – My First Finish!

It’s official – I’ve finished my first quilt!  I chose my fabrics, cut and pieced everything for the top, basted, quilted and bound everything together.  I even made my own custom label!  I’m so excited to show it off!

“Sunshine”
Quilt Stats:
Size: Approximately 40″ x 50″
Pattern: Derailed Quilt Pattern by FrivolousNecessity
Type of Quilting: Straight Line on my home machine
Date Finished: December 2013

I’m so happy with how it turned out!  My binding is really even and I think my mitered corners look really good for my first time.

    

And I love how the quilt label turned out!  I appliqued it onto my backing before I basted and quilted.  I’ll definitely be doing this for all of my quilts!

    

I did straight line quilting on my home machine.  It isn’t perfectly straight but I think the lines look pretty good.  I did have one really crooked row that I ripped out and redid though (thank goodness for my seam ripper!).

I even recruited my husband to help me get some full length photos of the front and back of the finished quilt.  Thanks honey!

     

Since it is almost Christmas (and this quilt is a Christmas gift for my cousin’s new baby), I though it was only fitting to get some photos with a Christmas tree too!  This gorgeous (and giant!) tree is at our local shopping center.

     

Look how giant those bows are! 🙂

I can’t wait for my cousin to open this on Christmas!  It is all wrapped up and ready to take home for the holidays!

Giveaway Winner!

I huge thank you to everyone who entered my giveaway last week as a part of Sew Mama Sew’s giveaway day!  I loved reading about the gifts everyone is excited about giving out.  You guys sure have some lucky friends and family members because there were a ton a great gifts shared!

I’ve used random.org to select a winner and wanted to congratulate Nicole on her new bundle of fabric.

She’s been contacted and her fabrics will be shipping out shortly.  🙂

Thanks again everyone!

Earning Your Ski Patrol Cross

I am so excited to share that my brother has officially earned his Ski Patrol cross and has become a full-fledged member of the Ski Patrol at Snowbird resort in Utah!

My brother moved out to Utah when he was 18 with the ultimate goal of joining Snowbird’s ski patrol.  He started out working the grill at Mid Gad (one of the restaurants halfway up the mountain) where he was skiing in and out of work each day.  He then shifted to working for facilities in their conference center where he was promoted to a supervisor.

Snowbird Ski Resort is located in Little Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains outside of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Last ski season, he joined the trail crew (which is a prerequisite to becoming a patrol member at his resort) and his goal was really in sight.  And now – just 3 years after moving out west – he’s got his dream job!

And to top it all off, he’s the second youngest patrol member they’ve ever had!  Can you tell I’m a proud big sister?

To commemorate his achievement, I wanted to make him a quilt.  I was planning to have it made before he earned his cross so I could send it to him right away but he was moved up from trail crew earlier than we were expecting so I’m having to change my plans a little bit.

As soon as I saw a pattern for a “plus” quilt, I knew I had to make it for my brother.  But for my purposes, it isn’t a “plus” quilt.  It’s a CROSS quilt!

I decided to use the Arithmetic pattern made by Jeni Baker (who blogs at In Color Order).  She also has a tutorial on her blog but it is only for a throw sized quilt and I wanted to make a full/double sized quilt that my brother could use on his bed.  It gets cold out in Salt Lake City!

Because ski patrol jackets are red with a white cross, I knew I wanted red and white to be the primary colors in my quilt.  But to make it a bit more interesting, I wanted to add a third color.  I decided to go with blue as it reminded me of ice crystals and felt winter-y which definitely fits with skiing!

Here are the fabrics I picked out for his quilt top:

I’m planning to start cutting into these this weekend and hopefully I can get my brother his quilt sooner rather than later!

Fabric Giveaway!

In honor of the holiday season, I’ve decided to host my first blog giveaway as a part of Sew Mama Sew‘s biannual Giveaway Day!  Plus, I’ve been lucky enough to win a few giveaways myself and I want to share the love!

If this is your first visit here, welcome!  I hope you take a look around and see the various projects I’ve been working on.  I’m still pretty new to this whole quilting thing and just recently finished my first two quilt tops.

And now on to the giveaway!  One lucky winner will win 4 fat quarters, one each of the following prints:

• Alison Glass – Feathers
• Michael Miller – Domino Dot
• Riley Blake – Pop
• Joel Dewberry – Zigtone

I personally really like all of these designers and I thought it would be fun to create my own mini bundle of coordinating prints from their lines.  I hope you like it too!

To enter to win you can do the following:

1. Just leave me a comment telling me what Christmas present you’ve gotten for a friend or family member that you are most excited to give them.  Personally, I can’t wait to gift my cousin her new baby quilt I’ve been working on.
2. My followers (new and old) can earn a second entry so please leave me a second comment telling me how you follow me (Bloglovin’, Feedly, WordPress Reader, etc).

This giveaway is now closed.  I’d draw a winner using a random number generator on Friday, December 13 at 8pm EST (5pm PST).  Due to shipping costs, I’m only shipping to US readers for this giveaway (sorry international folks!).

The winner will be announced by edit to this blog post and will also be contacted by email (so be sure to include your email if you are a no-reply or anonymous poster).  Good luck!

Updated:  Congratulations to Nicole!  You are the winner of my 4 fat quarters!  Thank you to everyone who entered!

Gifts to Myself

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!  My in-laws took my husband and I down to the Dominican Republic for a week of relaxation in the sunshine.  I definitely needed it!

Since we’ve been back, we’ve been busy, busy, busy with putting up our outdoor Christmas lights, getting the tree set up and decorated, and doing all of our Christmas shopping.  Needless to say, I haven’t gotten to spend much time on my sewing machine!

I did get a few “gifts” to myself that arrived over the holiday though.  First, I ordered a walking foot and a free motion quilting foot set (that comes with 3 different attachments) for my Janome Sewist 500.  Now that I have a quilt top ready to be quilted, I figured I needed to invest in the proper tools to make my life easier.

I also came home to beautiful package from Michele at Quilts From My Crayon Box.  She’d finished sorting all of the charms from our Kate Spain Charm Swap and my two sets had arrived back at my doorstep.

This is just 1 of my two sets.  Look at all the beautiful colors!  Can’t wait to make a quilt with these!

But we’re down to just over 18 days until Christmas and I’m starting to feel the crunch!