Echino Baby Quilt

This past Saturday, I went to a baby shower for a girl in my church.  I wanted to make her a baby quilt, but I don't know her very well, so I wasn't sure what to do.  Oh yeah, her and her husband have decided not to find out the sex of the baby, so whatever I was going to make had to be gender neutral, but it also had to be cool, because this couple is really cool!  I feel totally uncool for saying that, but it's true!

At first, I thought about making a quilt out of scraps I had, but as I started pulling them, I just wasn't feeling it.  I kept thinking about the Echino glasses and camera fabric (I'm really on an Echino kick lately), and I thought it seemed like "them."  Normally, I wouldn't have thought of those fabrics for a baby quilt, but a while back, I had seen this picture on Flickr of a baby quilt using Echino, and I thought it was a brilliant idea!

So, a week ago Monday, I went to Momen+ (they're gonna miss me when I'm gone, I think), and got all the fabric I needed - the glasses, the cameras, and solids.  Started cutting and piecing Monday and Tuesday, and spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday quilting and binding it.

I love the back!  I just used scraps of what I had cut from the front.

As far as the quilting goes, I went back and forth with how to do it.  At first, I thought I would just do vertical straight lines.  Then I changed it to horizontal straight lines.  Then I thought I would do diagonal lines in the corner blocks, vertical lines in the middle top and bottom blocks, horizontal in the middle side blocks, and a concentric square in the middle middle block.  Then I kept that idea, but changed the middle middle block to be an X with echo quilting.  Whew!  Does anyone else change their mind as much as I do? 

Here's a few closer up pictures of the quilting...

Oh, and after i did the binding, I realized that I made a small oopsie (did I just say that?) - you can see some of the print from the selvedge.  Oopsie!  Obviously, I didn't care enough to fix it.

I'm super happy with how it came out, and the mom-to-be seemed to really like it.  Strangely enough, she got a stuffed giraffe from someone else that almost exactly matched the colors in this quilt!  Funny how those things work sometimes.

Edited:  I'm linking up to Sew Modern Monday on Canoe Ridge Creations!

Echino Quilt

I posted a few weeks ago about Modern Relief for Japan, and how I had made a quilt for that, which would be raffled off with dozens of other quilts, the proceeds going to Japan. 

And then it didn't happen.  There were some legal issues that forced Modern Relief to shut down.

Bummer!

So I needed to find something to do with this quilt I made.  Thankfully, I saw that Seven Islands Fabric was having a quilt drive in participation with Patchwork Tsushin in Japan, who will be distributing quilts to those affected by the earthquake and tsunami. 

Seven Islands is just down the road from me in Torrance, so I was hoping to go there myself, as opposed to mailing it.  Last week I contacted them, set up a time to bring it to them (which was today), and whipped up a label to put on the quilt.

Even though the quilt is not going to be raffled off, I thought I'd still show some pictures of it.  Please excuse our sad yard.  What you don't see is about 5 mole holes that the quilt is covering.

Here's the front.  All I did is take some patchwork Echino, and cut it into strips.  I did have to piece the strips to make them long enough, so I did some fussy cutting - should've got a picture of that.  I was so proud of myself that the piecing wasn't even noticeable!

And the back.  I just used the leftover solids from the front, and added the pink and this bird Echino print, which is one of my faves.

When I first wanted to make a quilt for Japan, I wanted to use strictly Japanese fabrics, so I did!  Everything, even the solids, is Echino by Etsuko Furuya.  To top it off, I bought it from the local Japanese fabric store, Momen+, also in Torrance.  (By the way, I was in there the other day, and they totally knew me.  I go there too much!  I'm gonna miss that store when I move!)

Once again, I did the binding completely by machine with no pins - and I'm getting better at it!  This is, by far, the best job I've done with machine binding.  Here's a look

And look at that corner!  All four corners came out perfect.

And the label.  I didn't know if I should put one on it, but Melissa encouraged me to.  She can be very convincing!  Unfortunately, my printer is not working, so I couldn't do my usual print-something-out-in-a-cool-font-then-trace-it-onto-fabric thing, so my horrible normal handwriting will just have to do.



I just realized that I didn't get a good picture of how I quilted it.  I just did random lines throughout, and it kind of looked like a spiderweb.  So I'm calling it "spiderweb quilting."

I don't know how much good this will do - those affected have been through so much, and this seems like such a small thing.  But I hope it gives a little comfort to someone.

Quilting for a Cause

We've all seen the devastation in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, and I'm sure we've all wanted to help in some way or another.  What about donating money (proceeds going to Mercy Corps), with the possibility of winning a quilt?  I've briefly mentioned it before, but Modern Relief - Japan will have a raffle for quilts starting April 4.  Every Monday until May 16, Modern Relief will reveal 10 quilts that you could have a chance of winning for a donation as low as $10.

The week my quilt is up I'll give more details about it, but for now, just a picture.

Yesterday

Yesterday was an interesting day here in SoCal.  It rained pretty much all day long.  It doesn't rain here very often, and when it does, it definitely doesn't rain all day.  So that was part of the unusualness (is that a word?).

That was okay, though, because there's something so nice about quilting on a rainy day.  So that's what I did.  I'll write more about this later, but I was working on a quilt that I'll be putting up for auction for Modern Relief - Japan.

Then around 5-something last night, the lights flickered, went out, then came on again.  Then a few minutes later, they flickered, went out, and didn't come back on.  Until this morning!  

So most of my night looked like this

Which meant I had to dig out my 3 storage boxes full of candles and candle holders.  I used to be a really big candle person, but I don't really use candles anymore for a few reasons...

1) Candles and toddlers don't mix,

2) We strangely don't have any shelves or ledges in our living room, which is where we spend most of our time, so the only place to put candles is on our end tables, which kind of goes back to my first reason,

and

3) As far as keeping my house smelling nice, I'm slightly obsessed with Wallflowers from Bath & Body Works, and I have 4 throughout my house all the time. 

But after last night, I realized I had forgotten how nice candlelight is.  They still don't mix with toddlers, so back into storage they go.

Oh yeah, and I also lost signal for my cell phone, and since we don't have a landline, I felt completely cut off from the rest of the world.  And with my husband not home (he was coming back in town during all of this), that left me a little freaked out.

He finally made it home, and that's how I found out that pretty much all of my little piece of LA (San Pedro) was without power.  He said it was a pretty weird thing driving home in total darkness! 

I was also awakened around 4 am this morning to the sound of hail pelting our bedroom window, and then thunder and lightening a little after that.  Storms like this are rare around these parts!

So I didn't get quite as much quilting done as I had hoped, but I'm hoping to finish it up this week.

Blogger's Pillow Party

Rachel at Stitched in Color is hosting a Blogger's Pillow Party, and I thought it would be fun to play along.

There are some AMAZING pillows entered, many of which are already in my Flickr faves.

At the November meeting of the LAMQG, we signed up for a Holiday Swap. We drew names to find out who our partner would be, then we got together with them to find out their likes and dislikes. When I got together with Angela, she was kind of vague, but she said she wanted something that could be out all the time - not just for the holidays. She also said she really loved Japanese fabric. That was pretty much it!

At first, I was really stumped, but I knew I needed to get some Japanese fabric, since I didn't have a good stash of it. I was hoping to get inspired by whatever fabric I picked out.

Thankfully, inspiration did hit me when I picked out some gorgeous patchwork Echino. I decided to make a pillow, because that's something that can definitely be out all the time.

I recently bought a circle cutter, and was eager to try it out. As I was cutting the circles, I made sure to not just get one of the patchwork squares, but to include a little bit of the neighboring patches. I loved the look of the patchwork inside the circles! To highlight the look of the patchwork, I did a little machine stitching on the lines. I did this with three circles of different sizes.

It was my first time working with circles, and it was (I think) my second time doing applique, so I was a little nervous (it was also my first time working with linen, but I had been looking for a project to use it with).

I bought a coordinating Echino print to go with the patchwork one, so I framed my circles with that, and also put a strip of it on the back.

I was so in love with this pillow and wanted to keep it for myself! Since I didn't know alot about Angela (that November meeting was only her second meeting ever), I really didn't know if this was up her alley. She seemed to like it when I gave it to her at the December meeting, but we didn't get a chance to really talk about it. She told me later that the first time her husband saw it, his comment was, "Wow...that is so you!" which made me really happy.

Completed Swaps!

I was recently involved with two swaps that are now over. I'm really starting to like swaps, so I hope to be involved in more in the future.

The first was the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap Round 2. I blogged about what I sent, but not what I received, and it was a great little package! We are supposed to show sneak peeks and completed pictures of our mug rugs during the time of the swap. When I saw this one posted on Flickr, I just knew it was mine, because it fit what I said I liked perfectly! But since this swap had about 130 people involved, I did have a little doubt, so I was very excited when I got it. Oh, and it came from quiltinkimmie.





I already posted about the mug rug I made, but here's a picture of everything I sent to my partner.



The next swap was for the LA Modern Quilt Guild. We meet the first Monday of every month, so at our November meeting, we got our partners, and we were just supposed to make something that they wanted. It could be holiday themed, but it didn't have to be. My partner was kind of vague with what she wanted, but she did emphasize that she really likes Japanese fabric. I don't have alot of that, so it meant a trip to one of my favorite stores (oh, darn!), Momen+ in Torrance. They have tons and tons of Echino, Kokka, Heather Ross, etc, and it's just a beautiful store. So I picked out two Echino prints and some linen, which I've been wanting to work with, and went to town!

I came up with a pillow and matching mug rug, and I'm really happy with both! At last night's meeting, we swapped with our partners, so I hope she's as happy with them as I am.



Here's a picture of just the pillow, front and back...




And here's the mug rug. It was my first time working with circles, which I absolutely love now, and it was also my first time trying pebble quilting for the mug rug - I did it in a very cheaty kind of way. I used the fabric on the back as a guide, and I just traced the circles! I love the way it looks on the front. One of these days, I'll get a free motion foot for my machine and I'll be able to try the real thing.




I was so excited knowing who was going to be making something for me. It was Chris of Izzy Inspired! She's amazing, and I knew whatever she made I would love.

She definitely did not disappoint! I told her I wanted something for Christmas, and suggested maybe pillow covers. She asked if it had to be with Christmas fabrics, and I said absolutely not! I love the idea of creating a Christmasy look without actually using Christmas fabrics.

Just look at what she came up with!



These pillow covers are so beautiful! And the quilting - amazing!! Here's a closer look at the quilting for each cover.




And the back of each had these little hexies.



She used the ever-popular Flea Market Fancy line by Denyse Schmidt, which I don't have anything of, and I'm only really just now learning about it. I love everything about both of these! I felt so lucky that she drew my name!! I definitely think I'll stick with this swapping thing.