Dr. Seuss is a perennial favorite, so I've been working on a batch of Dr. Seuss themed quilts for the shop. These always go fast, so if you know a special baby or toddler who needs this one for Christmas, grab it quick. (Disclaimer: This post contains shop and affiliate links). This Dr. Seuss Baby Quilt can be purchased in my Etsy Shop here.
This quilt has 18 different Dr. Seuss themed fabrics representing 8 favorite Dr. Seuss stories and characters including Horton Hears a Who, The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, Oh the Places You'll Go, Red Fish Blue Fish, The Alphabet Book, Green Eggs and Ham, and Hop on Pop.
If you're looking to for a quilt your child can succeed with, this is a Cuddle® Squares Quilt is a great one. My daughter is a reluctant seamstress, but she REALLY love Cuddle® fabrics, so the right choice in fabric was a huge motivation for her. Thanks so much to Shannon Fabrics for sending us their amazing Cuddle® fabrics to try and to Fairfield World for supplying the batting and compensating me for this post. This post contains affiliate links.
This Anne of Green Gables Quilt is as simple and timeless as the beloved books by L.M. Montgomery. Make your own with this free pattern. Big thanks to Riley Blake Designs for sending me fabric from their Anne of Green Gables Christmas collection by Penny Rose Fabrics that's just hitting stores in the last month or so. And as always, thanks to Fairfield World for providing me with batting and compensating me for this post. All ideas, opinions, and enthusiasm are 100% my own. This post contains affiliate links to help support my work.
I know it's a bit early for working on Christmas projects...but let's be serious. Starting now, is the only way I get Christmas sewing done before the mad rush.
Anne of Green Gables was one of my favorite book series in middle school, and Gilbert Blythe from the first two Anne of Green Gables movies was my first celebrity crush. So I was SUPER excited to hear about this year's Anne of Green Gables Christmas fabric collection, and new I needed to make a quilt...but not just any quilt...a quilt worthy of Anne herself and one that I could imagine on her bed at Green Gables or in her cozy House of Dreams.
After looking through some vintage quilt inspiration, I came across this quilt made by Jane Austen and the other women in her family. I thought even though Anne herself did not like patchwork...she might have been willing to make a quilt fashioned after a pioneer of English women's literature.
As a quilter one of my favorite ways to commemorate a milestone event is with a quilt. So when our daughter turned 8 years old and chose to be baptized a member of the LDS Church a couple months ago, I made her this All White Cuddle Quilt to help her remember the special day. (Note: Fairfield World and Shannon Fabrics sent me supplies and compensated me to make this quilt and write about it on the Fairfield website here. This personal blog post is entirely my own.)
In the LDS Church we believe that the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit) is a member of the Godhead and helps lead, guide, and prompt our decisions. He also acts as a Comforter in times of grief, pain, and/or anxiety. Since this special girl suffers from severe social anxiety (selective mutism), I thought this physical reminder of comfort would help her remember that the Holy Ghost can also help comfort her soul.
This Free MATH Paper Piecing Pattern makes a great Mini Quilt or Throw Pillow or could be added into a larger quilt. I tend to collect math and science themed fabrics, and this was a great way to show some of them off. With Pi-Day coming up soon, I really wanted to do some Math-Geek sewing.
Many thanks to RJR Fabrics for providing me with a bundle of their Geekery Fabrics by Sue Marsh to play with. And thanks as always to Fairfield World for providing me with batting and compensating me for this post. This pattern was designed using EQ7. All opinions, ideas, patterns, and enthusiasm are 100% my own. This post contains affiliate links.
Our oldest daughter has never really liked math despite being reasonably good at it. We pressured her a bit to join math team last year. (As in...you want us to drive you to volleyball games every weekend...then you'll do math team at lunch.) Thanks to her wonderful math teacher/coach last year, she signed up more willingly this year, and now thanks to two years with some excellent math teachers/coaches, she says math is her favorite class. It makes this math-loving-mama super happy.
So when math team ended this year, we wanted to do something special for her teacher...so we whipped up a little math mini-quilt. It could also make for a great quilted pillow. We wanted it to be small enough she could display it in her classroom where she has another quilt hanging.
If you're just starting out with foundation paper piecing, this is a GREAT pattern for beginners...nice big pieces and not very many of them...and each block is a single pattern piece. I've got two sizes for you to choose from. I used the 9.5 inch blocks which just requires you to tape the paper pieces together to make the paper big enough. Or if you don't want to hassle with that, you can use the 7.5 blocks that print out on a single piece of paper.
If you're not already familiar with paper-piecing there are lots of simple tutorials online to help with the process. I like this tutorial.
Here's what you'll need to make your own:
Fat Quarter Bundle of Geekery by Sue Marsh for RJR Fabrics. I used By the Numbers in Black, Scientifically Speaking in Black, Atoms in Red, Atoms in Green, Atoms in Blue, and Germ * Amoebas in Yellow for my blocks.
5/8 yard backing fabric (SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING - MULTI ALBUS)
Pattern pieces each have a 1/4 inch seam allowance. They're in PDF form. When you go to print them be sure that your printer is set to print them ACTUAL SIZE.
Paper- Piecing Patterns are always mirror-imaged...so when you print them, they will looked "flipped" from how the block appear in my quilt.
To round out the gift we also slipped in our favorite Math Book. Despite the title, This is NOT a Math Book really IS a math book, but it's also a really neat art book that shows connections between art and math and doodling and has some fun activities.
(Below is a sneak peek my sister-in-law from Bond with Books put together.)
My long-time readers will know that I LOVE I-Spy charm squares and am always looking for new ways to use them. (I host I-Spy Square Swaps about once a year and also sell I-Spy charm sets in my Etsy Shop.) You wouldn't necessarily need to use I-Spy squares. Lots of quilt shops sell charm square packs where you can get a few squares from each fabric in a favorite fabric line.
Last year a dear family friend lost her battle with cancer. While visiting her family, they let me choose some fabric from her stash. She was an artist and LOVED color, so I chose this bright rainbow zebra to make a quilt for her grand-baby who was born a few months later.
I LOVE discovering fun science and math fabrics...and texty fabrics and so when I discovered this Chemistry novelty line by Becky Marie Designs for Riley Blake I knew I needed to make them into a quilt. We went for a black and gold motif since those are our school colors and my husband could use it on the wall in his classroom. Thanks to Riley Blake Fabrics for sending me the fabrics and to Fairfield World for providing batting and compensating me for this project. All ideas, opinions, and enthusiasm are 100% my own. This post contains affiliate links.
And my kids' enthusiasm all their own too!
They say the family that does chemistry together...stays together...
Here in my part of central Washington it's been below freezing for WEEKS...and we've got more snow coming down today. All I want to do is curl up in a quilt with a mug of hot cocoa until it warms up a little. So I thought I'd share some quilty inspiration, especially since lots of us are getting back to some of our bigger quilt ambitions since the holidays are over.
Even though I designed this quilt over the summer, I'm sharing it now because it makes me think of January Skies...all sorts of shades of grey, with some yellow sunshine peaking through...with the light sometimes fractured through ice crystals on the window panes. Through the grey there's lots of promise of a new year starting.
Many thanks to Fairfield World for providing me with their amazing batting and compensating me for this post to bring you all a bit of sunshine. This pattern was designed using EQ7. All ideas, opinions, enthusiasm and fabric used in this post are 100% provided by me. This post contains affiliate links to support my creatively and allow me to bring you more projects.
Christmas is over and I'm ready for Spring to come...but we still have a few months until she shows her face...sigh...
You might belong in Ravenclaw if you've a ready mind, where those of wit and learning will always find their kind...and now there's a House Quilt for Ravenclaws too.
Even though most of our favorite Harry Potter characters are in Gryffindor and we don't get to know many Ravenclaws well beyond Luna and a bit of Cho, I've always had a fondness for Ravenclaw. I've often figured that my 11-year-old-brainy-and-not-so-brave-self would have been sorted into Ravenclaw had I gotten my acceptance letter to Hogwarts (if of course there had been any Harry Potter world back then.)
Weighted pads and blankets (and vests and other weighted products) are often used to help calm individuals with anxiety, ADHD, autism, and other conditions, and they're surprisingly easy to make yourself. (And thanks to Fairfield for providing me with product, compensating me for this post, and helping me pass my geek-loves onto my kids. All ideas are 100% mine. This post contains affiliate links.) So since it's Happy Harry Potter week over at Rae Gun Ramblings, I thought we'd make a Harry Potter version of a weighted lap pad.
It has been so fun to see my younger daughter fall in love with the Harry Potter series this last year. As a first grader she made it through the first three books and she would be reading Goblet of Fire...except she keeps rereading Prizoner of Azkaban.
She'd seen a few of the movies before she started reading the books, and from the beginning she immediately connected with Ginny Weasley has her favorite character. (Rebecca dressed as Ginny when she was 4.)
Rebecca identified right away with Ginny's shyness because she's struggled with a severe form of social anxiety for a long time. Her selective mutism makes it really hard to speak up around people she doesn't know well...and school is especially difficult. (Imagine not talking to your teacher for the whole year...that was kindergarten for us.)
I love Ginny and I love that Rebecca loves Ginny because I know something that Rebecca doesn't know yet...that in the later books as Ginny finds herself and grows comfortable in her own skin, everyone gets to see the confident, spunky, and outgoing girl that was hidden inside Ginny the whole time. At home we get to see the confident, spunky, and outgoing girl inside Rebecca all the time...but not many people outside our family get to see that girl...yet...
This quilt has been a long time coming. With all the quilting I've done over the years, I've only ever made one quilt for my own bed...and that was one I started around 8th grade and finished around 10th grade. It was time for something more updated and more reflective of my current leanings toward modern quilting.
When P and B Textiles offered to send me some of their new Urban Scandinavian line by Kirstyn Cogan, I knew it belonged in a quilt for my bed. I really love a good black and white fabric line, and these are gorgeous. The were kind enough to to send enough queen/king size. They also sent 1 fat quarter bundle of their original Color Weave collection to use for the pops of color in the quilt. Many thanks also to Fairfield World for providing the batting and compensating me for this post. This pattern was designed using EQ7. All opinions are 100% my own.
Not to toot my own horn...but I fall in love with this quilt all over again each time I walk in the room. (My bed might even get made around half the time now. Ha!)
I've recently been learning more about the quilting side of things at my local modern quilt guild meetings, and how different battings create different looks. So for this quilt, I went with an 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting as a base and then added Nature-Fil™ wool batting over the top. This gives it the drape of a cotton batting quilt, but the wool makes the quilting lines show a bit more. A polyester Poly-Fil batting can also be used in place of the wool.
And because it was so large, I hired my friend and fellow Fairfield Master Maker Charisma Horton of to quilt it for me. She does professional longarm quilting and she did a fabulous job mimicking the pattern in one of the prints and also doing an off center focal point block. (She does some pretty amazing work if you're ever looking for long arm quilting services.)
And I love this fabric I found for the backing...I just love that it's black and white and the names of colors all over it.
And just because I had so much fun learning how to use EQ7. (Electric Quilt 7) for designing the pattern, I also worked up an alternative quilt with some of my most favorite fabrics from the fabric line.
For this version you would need:
1 1/2 Yards each of Your Four Favorite Urban Scandinavian Fabrics (2 Black/grey prints and 2 White/Black prints)
1 1/2 Yards each of 4 Color Weave Prints (Dark Gold CWEA 200X, Green CWEA 200 YG, Purple CWEA 200C, and Blue CWEA 200 B shown here)
1 Yard binding fabric
2 2/3 108" wide backing fabric
You would need to cut 6 - 17" Squares from each your fabrics (This will give you four extra squares.) Follow directions in original tutorial for sewing the Half-Square Triangle Blocks and finishing your quilt.
