Big Boy Quilt

My friend and colleague, Sarah and her partner wanted to start a family.  The gift of a baby who needed an emergency placement came into her life about a year and a half ago.  Along with that gift came the baby's older brother.  He also needed their love and care.  They are about to adopt him and I think he needs a big brother quilt.  He loves dogs, so I used Aces.  I love the bright primary colors and I hope it keeps him warm and feeling the love!

SNOW DAY!!!!!

Moxie

We are having a snow day!  Finally!  Everyone at school was torn between the excitement of a potential snow day and the excitement of Valentine's Day.  There was true ambiguity.  Wouldn't it be so fun to be at home, drinking hot chocolate in your jammies with your mom and dad... but, Oh, no, we will miss our Valentine's Day celebrations.  For me, the true disappointment was the fact that one of my students and I could not frost cupcakes we baked to celebrate the fact that she read 15,000 new words!

10,000 Words Celebration!

  and we were planning to distribute the pink cupcakes with sprinkles to all of our favorite people sporting our heart shaped sunglasses!  Will it be the same the Monday after?

So for me, I am home with Freddy catching up on my blog.  I have not been doing a very good job with either New Year's Resolution-I have not lost one pound of weight and I did not blog.  So I can't promise you that I will diet on the one day a year when chocolate should be eaten in great quantities.  But I am blogging and I have a lot to catch up on.  First of all, my dear work-mate, Katey is having her second baby!  And it's a boy!  And her husband, Willy, loves to fish and so, of course, I wanted to come up with a fish themed quilt.  I found a line of fabric called Sea Breeze and it is so happy and so not baby blue, but a cool blue.  This isn't the best photo because we took it at work with my iPhone. And here is the back which looks like a happy underwater world with smiling whales and sharks and jellyfish, surrounded by minnows!

Kaffe

Ok, next, my Kaffe Fassett scrap quilt came back from the long arm quilters at Alewives.  What can I say…Kaffe rocks and all the reds just tell story after story.  That is what I have always loved about quilts-the stories that they tell.  A good quilt is like a good novel-subtle in its metaphors and analogies!

And finally, the baby quilts-there is a population explosion happening around me and I have been raiding my stash, using up my leftovers and creating some mini quilts for new babes.  They are all strip quilts-so fun to make!  Here they are:

Catnap by Lizzy House

Heather Ross Briar Rose

Lizzy House Castle Peeps

New Year's Resolution

Well, I thought my only New Year's resolution was going to be to drop 10 pounds, but my friend, Sharon has encouraged me to add blogging to my list.  She recently twittered about my Fussycutter blog, which is embarrassing since I haven't written anything for 6 months!  So here I am, ready to add in the new creations I have been working on during this holiday season.  The first creation pales next to its recipient-the amazingly gorgeous Evelyn DiNicola!  Welcome to the world little girl!  Wrapped in Heather Ross is a great beginning to a magical childhood!


I have been working on a quilt this Christmas break for my amazing intern, Sam.  Sam has been with me for three years and I think I learn more from her than she learns from me.  She has the gift of youth and sees everything with fresh eyes.  She sees hope in all things and is a great balance for me when I am swayed by the despair of others around me.  She recently asked me how she could get one of my quilts and I told her that she had to get married or at least engaged, or have a baby-in any order for I am a liberated thinker.  But I have changed my mind and think that for being my intern all these years, she has earned a quilt which means I have added a new category for quilt recipients!  For Sam, the design had to be edgy and sophisticated to match her Brooklyn roots.  And had to have the color black because she likes black.  And I liked that this fabric has punctuation since we have to write to many darn reports!


I also decided this holiday season that I wanted to try my hand at something a bit more intricate, inspired by my friend, Rhea.  Rhea owns Alewives Fabrics in Maine.  Her fabulous staff are my first choice for quilt finishing with their long arm when the chore is too large for me.  She always comes up with a really cool quilt for the annual Maine Quilt Show.  One year she made  Jazz Hands or Erika's Honesty-both have the same design in the main hexagons.  I have been thinking about this quilt every since she talked to me about how she tried to create movement in the quilt by designing the block as though it were a kaleidoscope.  My former husband, Ben loves kaleidoscopes and had a very big fancy one that captivated me many years ago. So I thought I would try to work a little magic myself.  I have made one square and I am not so creative that I can stray from one collection.  I had lots of scraps from my Anyway You Slice It  quilts by Denyse Schmidt with her Chicopee line.  So I made my first block with greens and yellows.  I am moving on to some pinks and oranges next.  One block at a time!


 I have also been going through my left overs and have been thinking I should whip up another strip quilt given how cute Evelyn looks in hers.

Ok and here is the last project (making up for not blogging all year).  I lost the lovely Ally and the resilient Josie has had many health issues this year and my friend Lynn was there for me in so many ways with her lovely assistant Melissa.  I made Melissa a scrub with fun dogs to thank her.






Ok must stop writing now so that I can get to work on some of my new projects!  Happy New Year!
Thanks for the kick in the pants, Sharon!

July 2013

Since I got back from vacation and my conferencing, I have been finishing up projects that I have cut out in the past, but have just not had the time to finish.  Alas, they get stuffed away in a drawer, forgotten.  The problem with putting things away and letting time go by is that you end up missing some of the pieces or forgetting where you put the directions to the project-or worse yet, the person has grown too big for the project or that special occasion has slipped away.  So...finishing projects was on my list these past two weeks before I get busy again with my work!

First, I fixed some handles that were not initially sewed up properly on the Anna Maria Horner Multi-Task Bag.  I love Etsuko Furyara's birds and polka dots!

I finished Amy Butler's Sunday Sling.  I changed the handles a bit because I tend to carry large loads and I thought the ties on the top might hurt my shoulder blades.  It is fun and colorful for hot summer days!












Then, continuing on in the Amy Butler inspiration, I made three Origami Bags which all fit into one another-I think this makes such a great gift.  I used my Heather Ross stash!

I then put together some old Turning Twenty squares and examined my scraps to make a few more squares and this will make up a great baby quilt for someone special at school.  I planned to use Heather Ross's new Briar Rose line to make a strip quilt, but I am not feeling it for a baby boy quilt:














Let's see then, because it is my dear daughter's birthday, I finished a Made by Wendy from Anna Maria Horner voile for a birthday present.

Whole Lotta Lotta

I am posting after such a long time.  I am in Maine, on vacation, relaxing with Fred and my sewing machine!  I made a couple of throws from Lotta Jansdotter's Glimma line.  I just love the designs.  I used my wonky nine square technique I learned from Liberated Quilting by Marston.  I made a second one with my extra squares and added some Joel Dewberry.  I got the idea from Hawthorne Threads website-check this out

I have also been working on a third quilt and limiting myself to just using Glimma left-overs-challenging, but I think when I get home and go through other left-overs, I might have something good-stay tuned!

Fred is having his first one man show at Wake Robin!  He is working on his quilts and is setting up his Kaffe Fassett inspired work to quilt up on the very hot deck!

I
I am visiting with my good friend, Ginger while I am here.  I am sporting my Nani Iro shirt made with Hot Pattern's Plain and Simple Superfantastic Shirt pattern!  This is a super roomy, great, comfy shirt.  Just ignor her crazy husband in the background-he is jealous that he isn't sporting Nani Iro!  I have Phiona at Nido's to thank for the pattern and fabric.

Back home, before I left, I made a Study Hall Skirt by Anna Maria Horner for my friend, Karen and a ruffled skirt for my pal, MC Baker's gal, Ziva!  The Study Hall Skirt is super cute and hope to get a picture of Karen in it!  And if you haven't seen this ruffled fabric on rufflefabric.comrufflefabric.com-check it out as well as the tutorials!  I made a ruffled skirt for myself, my friend and Ziva!  Ziva looked the best in it!
















Finally-here is my Summer Washi in Kaffe Fassett's Persian Vases ready for dinner at the restaurant where Fred proposed 8 years ago! 

Shoeman's Puzzle

I have been working on a quilt for a very special person who is marrying in September.  She told me once that she was looking for something muted for bed linens.  I am not drawn to muted generally speaking and so I had lots of help from fans of muted tones to choose these colors to make Denyse Schmidt's pattern, Shoeman's Puzzle.  Fred had to hold it up outside, but he kept dragging it on the muddy ground and well, it is a wedding present, and although the bride is a Vermonter, it is nice to get wedding presents that are clean.  So I had to crop this photo a bit and there I am in my shadow at the bottom!  In any case, let's talk about this pattern.  Look how cool it is that your eye can play tricks on you and you can see squares, but then again, you can see circles.  I love that!  At Denyse's suggestions in her book, Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration, I used Kaffe Fassett Shot Cotton in Melon for the lighter green and a Kaufman Kona Cotton in Sage

for the darker color.  I used a coordinating print from Denyse Schmidt's Chicopee line, Circle Cross, for the back.  My great friends at Alewives quilted it with their long arm.  I hope my bride friend likes it!

Bee

Positive Behavior Support And New Bee Bags

At one of my schools we have a set of behavioral expectations:

Be Kind

Be Safe 

Be Respectful

And we have a Bee theme.  We were doing a presentation and  I made us all bee bags (to carry our warm buzzies) for a presentation!