Another seamstress!

I just talked to Dawn Sivert, the new baby's great-great aunt/grandmother, and she is very eager to join us in making this quilt. She is a skilled quilt maker, so will be a real asset! Amanda and I had just realized that having a square with an image of 14 Highland Ave. would be appropriate, so Dawn will embroider it onto the square. I have designed a primitive facsimile of the house, so I hope Dawn can jazz it up with her embroidering!

Quilting circle

It was a rainy, dark and dreary November afternoon that Aunt Sally pulled the quilting supplies out of her suitcase. My Mom and Sally drove down to Virginia for a visit the week before Thanksgiving. Along with her Sally brought the material to begin our quilt squares for Jeff and Jenn's latest addition.
It was a perfect afternoon of sewing, laughter, a few pin pricks, and happy talk of the baby that will be arriving soon.
Of course, I the novice, required a refresher tutorial in stitching with more than a few reminders along the way. The experts Janet and Sally breezed through their squares. Aunt Sally completed two.

Aunt Sally creating Thomas the Train. How appropriate from Aunt Sally...Trains!


Aunt Janet sewing her square. Ever patient her stitches are carefully done with love.

I wanted to create my own design. I used an illustration that I made for Jeff upon his completion of the Boston Marathon. Transferring it from pencil to fabric was quite something. In total I sewed for 8 hours. I think much of that time was because I'm not the best with needle and thread : )


Judy creating the design from illustration to fabric.

...and finally, Judy sewing her square.

I'm here too

Wonderful, I found my way here and now we can start to create together. I have some ideas for my square and am excited to begin. I haven't sewn in a long time so this will be an adventure : )

Quilts and Snowstorms

This blog is a great idea! As we spent our first weekend of the year snowed in - gotta love living in the Rockies! - I worked on a Mongolia-themed baby quilt for friends. Watching the snow swirl by the window, I was glad to be creating something designed to keep someone warm.  It's been a year of babies and baby quilts, but I'm particularly looking forward to this baby and this baby quilt. I'll be looking for my square in the mail, and hoping for another cozy snowy weekend to work on it.

Decisions

This is a nice idea to trace the progress of the quilt. The first thing we need to do is start cutting the muslin and decide on the designs for each square. Then we will have to decide who does which design, and which fabric is appropriate for each design. Decisions, decisions!

Fabrics and batting

Mom and I purchased the batting, linen and background material for the quilt. So far, in making these quilts, I have come to the conclusion that the proper background material will present itself and you'll know it when you see it. For this quilt, it didn't seem like that was going to be the case. We spent a bit of time searching JoAnn's fabrics looking for the perfect background. We found adorable paw print fabrics, but would that be appropriate and represent Boswell enough? There was a baseball print, but I remember Jeff saying he didn't really watch a lot of baseball, at least not until he spent so much time at the hospital with Bella.... We were scanning the shelves for something that had fire engines or maybe just a nice red fabric to off set a red fire engine that is put in a square? At first all we came across were fabrics with large prints of fire engines. There was also one fabric that had scantily clad firemen with pick axes and hoses. I thought that was funny, but probably more appropriate for Jen than a baby. We finally found checked blue fabric with little vehicles printed on it! It included sailboats, fire engines, trains, planes, and cars. Perhaps a little more stereotypically boy than I would have liked, but a very very cute fabric, and the one for this quilt!

A new blog, to document the making of a quilt!

A group of six relatives are going to sew a quilt for their cousin's and his wife's new baby. The six people making the quilt are sprinkled throughout the US--Massachusetts, Virginia, and Wyoming. This is a spot for all of us to write about experiences making the quilt! Once the quilt is done and we have given it to Jen and Jeff, we can show them our experiences making the quilt!