WIP Wednesday: Wee Wander

Having my own sewing room has been absolutely divine. I have been sewing every single day, even for 10 minutes here and there because I never need to put anything away so it is always ready to go! Despite the sewing time, blogging time has been trumped by unpacking and general summer busy fun.

Here is what I have been working on. A co-worker is expecting twin girls in early October/late September. Her nursery is white with little pops of colour. I have been dying to try Owen's Olivia's tutorial for a wonky star and this seemed like the perfect project!

I then went through my stash and found my Wee Wander fat eighths and felt inspired. One girl twin will get a cool colourway and the other will get a warm colourway. I'm seriously crushing on the fabric.

Wee Wander fat eighths. I also had to add in some C+S from my stash and some Lizzy House diamonds because some of the prints are too "white" to work against Kona White backgrounds (not enough contrast).

I tested a block from the tutorial and was not happy about the amount of waste. I mentioned this on Instagram and Owen's Olivia responded immediately and changed her tutorial to allow for less waste. Amazing!

Right? This block? SO CUTE! (It is 12" square).

The trimmings have been soooooo cute. I needed to take a picture so I could say goodbye and feel less wistful. I know that's sad. I'm okay with it. :)

Cool trimmings all together. 

I then jumped into warm (pink, orange, coral and fuschia) and spent a few more hours making all the star points for this quilt.

There are some bold colours but overall it will be a soft look, I think.

I was fortunate that in the most recent move I was able to find and consolidate all my rulers, including this 4.5" square ruler that was the perfect size for trimming all these blocks down!

I love when things work out.

It took awhile to trim them all. There are four to trim for each block and there are 12 blocks in each quilt. Eeeek.

Aren't these prints enchanting?

I got all the points done for the cool quilt and just finished the warm points. Now this quilt gets put on pause while I quilt a baby quilt (that is quite large) to make sure it is done in time for the baby's arrival in August!

Won't this be a lovely palette for one of the girls?

And now back to the tedious quilting I decided on for the blue/green animal baby quilt. I need a fan in my sewing room because this quilt is quite heavy and hot and I'm roasting even with the air conditioning on while I'm quilting!

Linking up with Work in Progress Wednesdays by Freshly Pieced.

Possibilities

I am in my new house and boy, moving is much more difficult when you have two little "helpers." Not much progress has been made in the sewing room but oh, the possibilities! To go from sewing primarily in my dining room which was the first room you saw when you entered my house, and which needed to be disassembled for every family meal/event, to having my own sewing room? I'm in heaven already!

The baby was in a mood the other day and so during her nap I unpacked some of my fabric onto my shelves, as you can see in the corner. That was my "if I can play with fabric I can destress from a fussy baby" fix. Only about 1/3 of the sewing stuff is actually in the sewing room right now (the rest is in bins and boxes in either the garage or the basement) but most of my fabric is in this pretty new home (though not in this picture. I assure you, the stash is much larger and more ridiculous than those pretty, neat shelves).

My machine is not even in this shot because I took the move as a good chance to take it in to be cleaned.

The room is painted a really light, neutral grey (Balboa Mist by Benjamin Moore if you want to know) because I figure that the room will be full of colour from my quilts. But the closet I decided to have fun with and painted it (well, had the painters paint it) Florida Keys Blue which is this fun teal colour that makes the inside of the closet so much more interesting.

And the closet is pretty empty right now. I am positive that will change!

While sorting through and unpacking fabrics, I found a few bundles I had curated for future projects that I felt needed to be added back into general circulation. One example is this Lizzy House Pearl Bracelet combo. For some reason this colour combination was just calling my name but it has been awhile and it doesn't sing to me like it used to. I would rather use these Pearl Bracelets in other quilts so they got added back into the main stash. I figured snapping a picture would preserve the vision, if I ever desperately wanted to recreate it!

Oh, how I love Pearl Bracelets.

Priority #1 is a baby quilt for our (now no longer) neighbours expecting their fifth boy in August. I've waffled on this a zillion times. Here is where it is going. Who knows what it will be like by the end!

I decided to do a rectangular thing (right hand page) and I need to throw in more solids for it to work. 

I hope the other boxes floating around my house can just unpack themselves because I am itching to sew! I think it will take the general chaos that I hate about moving and give me a zen activity to get into a better mindset. Here's hoping for a few minutes of sewing time!

Meow Mix: A Finished Quilt

A lovely friend and co-worker and her husband, whom I've also worked with, are expecting their first child this summer. They both wanted to find out the sex of the baby but two ultrasounds later and baby was not revealing anything. Because she's had a healthy pregnancy (knock wood) there are no more ultrasounds which means baby will be a surprise!

So when I came up with a quilt colour scheme and theme I had to go gender netural. I also know they are both crazy about cats (particularly their sweet, on-eyed rescue cat) so I thought that they would like a cat scheme. I pulled a Lizzy House print to kick off the colour scheme and then this wonderful turquoise, teal and white creation came to be. I'm totally in love with the colours and kind of want one for myself.

The pattern was inspired by this free quilt pattern on Pinterest that I found. I wanted to break up the busy patterns so I had some Kona White for some of the boxes which I think really helps visually. It wasn't quite big enough done to the pattern so I added a border.

All of this fabric came from my stash (Hooray!) including all the bits in the pieced backing.

These colours are so awesome.

This block has the Lizzy House Cat nap print that kicked off the whole colour scheme.

A few more cats. Because why not?

Teal Quatrefoil and Tula Pink? Yummy.

The larger pieces leftover from piecing the front make up the right side and then three strips of leftover yardage from my stash in various turquoise/aquas.

I quilted on either side of each joining seam plus down the middle, then one through each block in each direction, horizontal and vertical. It has just enough quilting to have a nice drape for a baby quilt.

I hope she loves this gift for baby!