Welcome Little One!

Eddy's brother Gene and his lovely wife Annie have a new little girl!  The obvious thing to do is send quilts.  Send so many quilts.  Annie told me she was entertaining the idea of an RBG nursery decor theme.  Whether she was serious or not, I decided to take it very seriously and send this little number. 

Okay, but then I needed to send an actual baby quilt along. I was very excited about this pattern I found and the fact that the nursery color is lavender.

So I did a lot of cutting and labeling.

And turned that stuff into this kind of stuff.

I used some of my very favorite fabrics from my stash on this project.

Here's a very unsexy picture of the layout for the quilt top.

These rows are just too cute.

TOO CUTE!  I am actually so pleased at how the quilting came out. This is the first time I've really felt confident about my free motion quilting.

I found a very teeny, stripey fabric for the quilt binding.

Okay. Here's where things get dicey. I swear (I SWEAR!) I took so very many pictures of this quilt before I sent it off to little Eleanor, but I cannot find those pictures. All I have is this garbage shot of the pieced top

And this somewhat lovely shot of it as a finished quilt.

That's all she got. Apparently. Well, not Eleanor. She gets the whole quilt. Welcome, little friend!

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Dump Trucks Go Boom, Boom!

We have a nephew and that nephew loves dump trucks.  I found a quilt pattern one day for a dump truck and I realized just what to do with that pattern.  Make a quilt for Harrison!

I used some buttons that used to be my grandma's for the wheels.

I added some sweet little cloud quilting and a big ole "H".

Gene and Annie sent me the sweetest video of Harrison chatting about his quilt and it made my day! Enjoy, kiddo!

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Remember the Summer?

It has been a real long time since I've blogged.  That means we're going way back to the summer time in an effort to get caught up.  It's nice, actually, to look out on a snowy Portland and remember all the summer fun we had with Eddy's family when we visited the midwest.

First we went to Wisconsin to visit Ceci.

She showed us how to eat all the cheeses.

I mean, like, all of them. We also went to a Zoo. Turns out the Madison Zoo is particularly punny.

But there were penguins there.

And things to stick our heads through. And pose next to.

Eddy's favorite is always the polar bears.

Also, we did some drinking with Ceci on the UW Madison campus.

The botanical gardens in Madison had a great spot for me to have tea parties to topiary bears.

Also a beautiful Thai Pavilion.

Next we went to Chicago to see these characters.

We got to meet little Harrison for the first time. He and Eddy had a lot of shared interests.

Clearly we couldn't visit Chicago without also hitting the Lincoln Park Zoo as well. Eddy was sad that the polar bears were off exhibit.

I sat on a tractor there. In the middle of the city.

We also did some Divergent tourism.

We went to the Merciless Mart.

It wasn't what we expected inside based on the books.

Get it? Because post-apocalyptic literature?!  And pillows?

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Bright Young Women

My husband knows all of the words to every song in Disney's Little Mermaid.  I have personally verified this fact.

Apparently, Eddy's little sister, Ceci, was quite the fan and also quite the repeat watcher as a kid.  Ceci's all grown up now and when her birthday rolled around this year, I knew just what to do (even though I was a few months late in doing it.) You see, while out thrifting one day I found a vintage Little Mermaid bed sheet (alright, two of them) and I knew they must be backing for a quilt (alright, two of them.)  Thankfully, I already stumbled upon this amazing tutorial for a modern waves quilt, so a mere 2 months after Ceci's birthday I started cutting!

I pieced about a million curves (USING THIS FANCY NEW TUTORIAL I JUST MADE!)

I did the basting.

And then I started my special quilt lettering method.

Now, let's pause here and talk about The Little Mermaid.  Those of you who are *not* TLM lovers can just move right along to the pretty pictures. Those of you who love TLM, have you watched it recently?!

One thing I do when I make quilts inspired by Disney movies (see Cats and Rabbits and this Christmas quilt for my mom) is watch them.  But I mean watch them so much.

Like, the.
entire.
time.
I'm.
working.
on.
the.
quilt.  (I too am a repeat watcher.)  

TLM is so sexist, folks!

I mean, not even a tiny bit inoffensive.  Don't get me wrong.  When Sebastian is all, "What do they got? A lot of sand?" I'm all, "We got a hot crustacean band!"  I mean, it's so good!  It smacks of childhood nostalgia and there are so many memorable lines.

So what's a girl to do for her feminist, TLM-loving SIL?  Well, I picked the two quotes that were most positive toward women (especially when taken out of context) and I quilted those babies right into the front of the quilts.

Ceci's quilt reads:

Bright young women
Sick of Swimming
Ready to Stand

And mine reads (Did I mention? Two sheets. Two quilts. One for me!):

Things are Working Out
According to my ultimate design

This is an actual thing Eddy and I say sing to each other when, well, things are working out according to our ultimate design.  It's such an applicable song lyric for your everyday life.  I promise.

I challenge you not to sing those quotes in your head!  Not even possible.

So back to the quilting.  I bound the quilt using more little mermaid sheets.

Which resulted in some pretty nifty little snapshots, my favorite of which is King Triton staring down King Triton.

And this little corner scene.

Here are the finished quilts!

Things are working out according to my ultimate design. Soon I'll have that little mermaid and the ocean will be mine! [evil cackle]

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