Unicorn Pillow

This is the image I first fell in love with

This is where I got the unicorn pattern

I found this unicorn pattern online and I just had to make it. I was trying to come up with some reasons to not stop work on every other work-in-progress to start this new project, and of course, my bestie was no help- her eyes went all gooey and cartoon-heart-y, and she told me it didn't matter that I didn't have the right colors to make it the same as the first example I had fallen in love with, I could make it a rainbow unicorn and she'd still be in love.

She didn't know that last summer my mom had given me some large scraps of rainbow fabric, from a dress she made me as a little girl, as she packed up her and my dad's home of almost 30 years to move halfway across the country. Or that I had the perfect teal from my late grandmother's basement stash to brighten up the background. Or the princess-castle orchid fabric from the same basement that would work so well on the back of the pillow. Or that I had a ton of greys and silvers because I'd been stocking up on all the grey remnants I could find for another project I had cooking in my brain (now in progress).

Anyways, I made it. I worked on it on my birthday because I loved it. I got some white muslin to put behind the pieced top to make the colors bolder and brighter regardless of the color of the pillow inserted. I found some embroidery floss that matched the teal almost perfectly, and created different patterns of lines and dots to hold the two thicknesses together. I attached two pieces of the princess-castle orchid fabric to the back to fold over each other and hold in the pillow form, because obviously, she's going to want to wash this pillowcase and trade out pillow forms over time. I even considered a zipper close for the pillowcase, but got lazy.

Tardis Hot Pad

Paper pieced for my mom for Mother's Day- she's been watching Doctor Who since the 70s!

Pattern from here: https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/tardis-doctor-who-along-qal-block-1/153955

Quilt for Baby Romo

Ok, I'll admit, I conceptualized making this one before I even knew there was a baby coming. 6 months to a year ago, I bought a small amount of a solid light blue colored fabric that I thought would go well with the darker blue solid and darker stripes (which I already had and bought maybe two years ago), then found the lighter striped fabric in my closet. While unearthing the lighter striped fabric, I came across the "cowboy toile" remnant I bought several years ago and loved so hard I couldn't cut it up and sew with it then (have since moved on from cowboy phase). I had decided to work a nine-square pattern with all the other blues, so I just figured out a way to fit it in, by throwing in some larger squares (taking the place of four smaller squares) that would let the cowboy print show, and also throwing in a couple half-square triangles, for some variety, and to shake up the very rigid lines that were being created.

The quilting stitches I worked on my sewing machine, half the presser foot's distance in from the edge of the solid blue squares edges, so that the lines almost shake from side to side (again, trying to disrupt some of the rigid up and down-ness of the nine-square edges and the striped fabric).

The edging is a blue color that was used for the entire back. I did run out just shy of enough to go all the way around, but I subbed in some of the darker blue color from the front of the blanket (not an exact match, but close- shhhhhh). On the upside, I have NO leftovers of that fabric that will sit in my closet for another several years until I find a use for them!

All in all, I think it turned out really nice, a little small (roughly 36x45), but good for a little baby, and little baby Romo is in fact- a baby.

Quilt for Baby Webster

I chose the front fabrics several months ago... and then last weekend I spent what felt like forever wandering around JoAnn's with two fabric squares in hand, trying to find something, anything that would both (a) match well with the colors already committed to for the front of the blanket, and (b) not be too dark, too navy blue based- this is for a baby! Finally found the one I used, wasn't feeling 100% about it, but it was the best I'd seen, and I ended up getting the "end of bolt" discount on it (woot woot!), since the bolt only had about 8" more than what I needed. I'm much happier with my choice after putting it all together and washing it and handling it.

I also opted to do some machine quilting on this one! Nothing too fancy, as I don't have a quilting machine, nor do I even have a walking foot, but enough that it's held together in enough key points that it should hold together. Only place that's really at risk are the points where 8 half-square triangle meet- I should have figured out something to do there, but I procrastinated until the last minute on finishing this project (Christmas happened, you know). For the quilting stitches I got clever and used a white bobbin thread for all of them, and green upper thread for the green triangles and grey thread for the grey ones. Came out looking really nice, but it was a beast trying to find all of the white thread tails on the back! I may have even clipped a straggler off right before giving this quilt away...

Please ignore the cubicle walls and company calendar in the background of the 'whole quilt' picture, the quilt went to a friend from work and she wasn't that into being photographed that day...

Raspberry and Cream Waves

Blankie 911!

D came home last weekend and told me he needed a blanket for his nephew- for Thanksgiving- which was then just under a week and a half away. So, I had to come up with a pattern that was simple enough to get finished in a week. I remembered the design of these quilts we saw on the "loft" beds at a cabin we stayed at on vacation, which were pretty, but simply pieced, and I ran with that. Picked out fabric on Monday, started cutting in the next day or two, went out for D's birthday on Thursday, started catching a cold Friday, remembered at the LAST MINUTE I had a one-day workshop class at Lillstreet on Saturday, and still managed to have all the pieces cut out, pieced into squares (with a big X through all thicknesses) and put back together by 8pm on Sunday. I ran it through the washer and drier this evening, and it's all set to travel with us tomorrow. I don't *love* the rough and raw edges, and probably won't make a regular practice of it, but it was fun to break the rules and let them fray out in the open just once.

Purple Blankie

Purple hand-me-down yarn from my Mom, matched with a purple-teal-magenta variegated yarn that had caught my eye at JoAnn's a while ago. I tried to take a picture of the stitch pattern, but Kitty decided that was the perfect moment for a kneadability test.

Also my camera batteries decided to be dead when I grabbed my camera this morning- so cruddy phone photos it is.