Assembling the Borders and Stripes Quilt Sandwich

After the quilt top was pieced together - over 2 weeks ago - I got around to starting the quilt sandwich.  The prep work took a while to finished.  My house is pretty small and the biggest area in it happens to be the main living area - aka play area, tv watching area, family hanging out area, ironing area, etc etc.  Well after about 20 minutes of picking up, vacuuming and organizing I finally got my quilt sandwich going.

Here is the quilt top with just the batting in place:


As usual - the batting of choice:

I'm still going through my giant queen size roll of this batting. Love it!

And do you know what happens after a mom gets about 1 hour of alone time in?

This:

AKA: The trouble-makers!

Oh well, the rest of the assembling will have to wait ... arg I JUST finished clearing up the living room floor!  I love those two little rug-rats :).

Quilting Along...

Been a while since I got to do any whole blanket quilting.  It was a hard decision picking the quilting thread color for the Modded Brown quilt.

After much thought - and some trial and error - I went with a dark gray, almost black, colored thread.


The dark gray was a little shocking next to the light gray fabric when I first started to quilt, but I got used to it after a while.

How many different colors did I end up trying before settling on the final one?

1. Dark brown. There was a lot of dark brown on the quilt so I decided to match, but it didn't really go well when quilted on top of the other colors.  Even on the dark brown, it thread color just blended and didn't provide much to the quilt top.
2. Beige.  Went really well with the Red print and Olive print fabrics.  However it was too contrasting to the brown and didn't go well with the light gray at all.

Okay - 2.  I considered some other colors briefly - dark red, dark blue - but quickly decided against them.  The dark gray thread on this quilt is growing on me and now that I'm about 75% done, it is beginning to look like a good color choice :).

I don't use a quilting frame - more on that on a later post - so I had quite a task maneuvering this larger quilt time around.  But with the help of some sticky top gloves (my make-shift quilting clothes) I got it under control.

I garden a lot so I decided to get a clean pair of these gardening gloves from a local gardening center:


These are very thin so it doesn't feel clunky when quilting.  All on the front are little sticky circles and provides a very nice grip for the quilt tops.  I got this for a couple of bucks :).

I still have a little bit of quilting to finish up for this quilt.  I'm kind of sad to see the quilting ending actually ... guess I really like this part of the process.  Well here's the quilt right now waiting to be finished.

A Project for Both My Boys

I always wanted to make little baby blankets for my 2 boys but I got trumped.  My husband's coworker was very generous and nice and made both my boys blankets before they were born.

However, I don't know why, but I feel the need to make them their blankets NOW.  Maybe 'cause I found these very cute fabrics I just cannot resist from FabricWorm - a Japanese Import print panel.

Here is the 2 small blanket tops sandwiched with the batting, ready for the backing:


This one with a little bit of pink in it is for my older son - Asher who's 3.  He likes pink, balloons, and robots - all things this blanket has.  I am going to back this quilt with an all blue Moda fabric.



This is for my younger son - Silas who's 1.  It has the same cute designs as the first fabric but has more green in it and no pink.


I can't wait for the boys to see these finished.  I have been sneaking these around so I could surprise them with the finished quilts :). Hahaha this will make up for the lack of making my own kids blankets.

Unplanned Weekend Activities

It was suppose to be my Friday off work, followed by a weekend of quilt making...but life always have a way of creating distractions.

It turned out that I did have to go into work Friday, and it was a much longer work day than usual.  Needless to say I didn't have a chance to do much that Friday night.  Saturday I didn't that it was about time my older son got some new clothes - haha though his pants do make wonderful capris :P.  But nonetheless, it was time to do some cloth shopping - for the kids and for myself and my husband.  So Saturday, after a quick Farmer's Market run, we headed out to the outlets for new clothes.

Sunday was spent at my niece's 4th birthday party - HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEETIE!

So, here's the damage to my Weekly Goals last week:


I finished about half of the goals and barely started on the rest :(.  Better luck next week right?  Well I've updated my goals for the coming week - hopefully I'll have better luck this time around: