Teacher Appreciation

...& the blog I forgot to post...


Last week was teacher appreciation at my son's school.

 I made these

 ('cause in case you don't remember, there's a moratorium on sending in home-baked treats...)

Now, there was a teacher who'd moved away in the middle

of the year. Two of our boys 

had him for percussion

& band the past 5.5 years; but the rest of our family loved him & his tribe, too. (A few years ago I made a quilt for his baby girl & blogged about it here.)

 
Well, baby girl now has a baby brother, & of course we had to make a quilt for him! Last fall I found out the nursery was to have a woodland theme, so I bought a set of appliquéd forest animals from Bunnycup Embroidery.

Next came the arduous task of finding the perfect backing fabric. None of my local shops carried something that would coordinate with the embroideries; but a shop on Etsy had some yardage I loved!

Then I heard the baby would be a "he" so I had to make sure my fabrics for the appliqués were boyish.

I had plenty of help from Duncan, who has lots of experience with quilts...

I quilted by using a double needle & "stitch-in-the-ditch" -- I like the way it turned out, for the most part.

Next big decision was what to bind with & my friend Cindy gave me the best advice, "Orange Minkee" she said.

Perfecto!

Then all that was left was to stick it in the mail...

Quilt cat

See the cat.

This cat loves quilts.

The cat is on the quilt.

The cat naps.

The cat is in the way!

This cat loves vintage quilts.

The dog naps on the chaise.The cat naps on the quilt.

Silly cat.

Silly, silly cat.

Baby girl pennant quilt

Teachers are underpaid & under-appreciated. Teachers’ spouses, even more so…  We learned at last spring’s concert that the boys’ band director & his wife were due to have a baby girl join their coupledom this month. I decided I wanted to make a quilt for her.

I had seen some darling pennant “modern” quilts on a few of my favorite blogs. I drew up a design of my own:I thought I would be able to find a fat quarter bundle with the pink colors I envisioned… NOT! I ended up having to locate 8 fabrics and had them cut 1/4 yard of each.I embroidered the letters of her name on the little flags, then backed them with a lightweight fabric. (…was still trying to decided if I wanted lace around each one, as I had indicated in my plan…)I pressed the “loop” into my narrow seam-binding & tried my layout. Oooooops! -- The size of the pennants made for a bit of a bigger quilt than I’d expected…The tops needed to be bastedand then pinned to the bias strip.Had to check the layout again & make sure the birdies I decided to add looked O.K.I made the “quilt sandwich” and stitched on the seam binding and around each pennant. Next came the appliqué-ing of the darling blue birds. (These were from Embroidery Garden machine embroidery designs.)Now, I’ve never said these words before, so please excuse me if I linger over them -- Then I took it over to my quilter. Actually, I begged my friend Cindy to quilt some clouds for me. I didn’t even offer her a quilting design to follow! She had some beautiful projects of her own that she was working on completing, but she squeezed my little job in anyhow.Doesn’t the back look cute, too?After I straightened the quilt, I determined that the corners would be kinda cute rounded (to balance the angular pennants & complement the loop in the “rope” somewhat…)

I was soooooooo excited to be able to utilize my Clover Wonder Clips that I’d purchased from HL with a coupon!When I was complaining on social media about how much I hate finishing a quilt; Friend Cindy said to bring it over ‘cause she loves binding! (I restrained myself from taking her up on it…)Never fails! (graphic violence alert! ) If I’m hand-stitching a light-colored fabric, I will accidently get a tiny poke on a finger and will have one drop of blood…(I couldn’t even tell where on my hand the needle got me!) Fortunately it did not leave a spot after sponging with antibacterial hand soap…So… I guess I’ll just end this post with a couple of my favorite shots of the finished quilt…

 

 

 

 

 

 

how I create a baby quilt:

  1. facestalk the expectant couple

  2. drink a gallon of coffee while contemplating the info gathered

  3. draw grid (OK, so it's just a table...) in Publisher®

  4. scroll through embroidery designs to find items to fit the theme

  5. (buy new designs, if needed...)

  6. arrange embroidery design jpgs in grid

  7. dig through fabric stash to find cloth to fit the theme

  8. (buy new fabric, if needed...)

  9. arrange fabric jpgs in grid

10. embroider designs

11. cut remaining squares

12. lay out quilt on carpet for dog to roll on

13. stitch squares into rows, then rows together...

14. "sandwich" top with batting & back fabric

15. quilt & bind

(I'll be linking up with Skip to my Lou for Made by You Monday.)