Striped Cat Quilt

One of my very dear friends is expecting a little girl - almost any day now!  She painted the nursery in pink and white stripes with a scene of a carnival.  I kept trying to find a pattern of something carnival-ish that I could incorporate a black cat into, but I couldn't find anything I liked.

So I just scrapped that idea and did a pink and white striped quilt with a cat and bird on it.  Why a cat fascination?  My friend has a black cat I wanted to incorporate into the quilt!

A few of the fabrics I used I found at Joann's, easy enough.  But I couldn't find a pink I like!  I found those at a store in Brighton called Creative Quilt Kits.  The backing is the same fabric as the inner stripe that is off white with brown and pink.

The lighter pink fabric has little squirrels and owls and other animals on it.  The off white fabric around the stripes has little brown birds on it.  that's why I decided to go with the little bird flying away and the shape of the cat.  I found both just by doing a google search for those items.

For the binding, I kind of messed it up.  Oops, I was trying to entertain my two year old while working on it, so it's not perfect, but as long as it stands the test of a small child, that's really all that matters, right?

I use regular cotton fabric, one day I'll try one of these really nice fuzzy fabrics like some of the blankets I see on Zulily that look so soft and comfy!

Frog Quilt

This Saturday I'm hosting a friend's baby shower.  She doesn't know if it's a boy or girl and didn't want a theme that was overly froo-froo.  So I picked frogs because they painted their nursery a very bright green.  Or as her husband said - Kermit the Frog green.  And that answered what I should do for her quilt!  I knew I wanted to try something a little different than the Noah's Ark one and preferably easy because I need to start work on another friend's baby quilt as well.  Why I keep signing myself up for so many projects, I don't know.

I thought these little squares that were about 8x8 inches would be easy to sew.  Well, not really, they were hard to get exact (I'm not so good at the measuring exact part yet) and then sewing it together so that all the seams matched up.  Thankfully my Mother in Law was there to help so it didn't turn out too bad.

The goal was to put frogs on all the squares, but I got a bit lazy.  My favorite part: the one with the tongue catching the bug!  I feel so creative for coming up with that.

I wasn't going to do a border, but I thought it looked a bit unfinished, so I added the red border.  All the fabric is from JoAnn's.

My other favorite part, the super cute turtle, bug, and frog fabric for the backing.  The other bad idea on this quilt - putting a border on the back.  Ug.  Trying to get the borders on the front and back to match was impossible.  They're not quite matching, but they're close!  Hopefully my friend won't mind.  It doesn't look bad, but I want everything to be perfect.  I have to remind myself it's only my second quilt.

Now my next project is to finally finish the stupid guest bathroom that mocks me every day.  I want to find a nice painting or something for that room to finish it off from One Kings Lane.

My first quilt ever!

I've always wanted to make a baby quilt and luckily my mother in law does quilting, so she helped me create one.  I'm pretty excited about it.  Let me say the only reason it turned out this well is because my MIL helped.  A lot.

I knew I wanted do a Christian themed one for a friend of mine and Noah's Ark seems like a pretty basic, not too crazy idea for a quilt.  The thing about the arc and animals on here, it's not a quilting pattern, but a free stained glass window pattern I found online.  Stained glass window patterns work really well for quilting because when cutting glass, it's hard to do lot of little corners like it is in quilting.

I found all the fabric at Joann's and I think it turned out well.  I was really torn on how to pick 'good' fabric for a quilt.  I washed, dried, and ironed all the fabric first, except that of the arc.  Which I should have done as well because when I washed it after it was finished, the fabric shrank and came out of the stitching.  ARG!  I had to go back over it.

The sun with the shape of the cross stitched through it was my idea and I think I'm pretty fabulous for coming up with it!  :)

Check it out and let me know what you think!!