Another Quilt

A fairly large fraction of the people I know are pregnant right now (or just had babies) so many of my gifts have been a bit on the laid back end of the spectrum, but sometimes I pull out all of the stops. My good good friend is expecting a wee one (of as-yet unknown gender) in May, and so I embarked on a project that would combine two of my recent obsessions, and work with her color scheme somewhat. She went with the RH Safari collection, which has lots of lovely muted colors and beigey linen. Oh, and she's a painter (among other things). Meanwhile, I've been enamored with color coordination and pretty much all things Purl Soho, especially this quilt (from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts). I am, however, far too imprecise to take on such a challenge, nor do I have a stash quite this big. BUT, I also recently ran across this super-sized star pattern in the Moda Bakeshop, which seemed similar but much more do-able.

And so this is what I managed to pull together (sorry photos are rotated, blogger is being a jerk):



It ended up about 52" square, which was okay though a bit big. Here's what the back looks like, with its finagled fabric:



The last quilt I made as a gift (which I believe I have no photos of...) I didn't finish in time for the baby shower, but I totally gave it to the mom-to-be then took it back to finish, which was lame. I was determined not to do that this time, and I thought I totally had it together, then I realized how much hand finishing was going to be needed...





Let's just say there were several late night stitching sessions and I watched a lot of REALLY BAD television after running out of good things to watch on hulu. But, I'm really happy with how it turned out, thanks in large part to the perle cotton stitching. I bit the bullet and ordered a set of all colors from Thread Art, and I'm pretty pleased with that decision. The spools are small, so I don't feel like I'll have to be buried with them some day, and it was way easier to just have them all than try to guess the colors I would need via not great internet photos. Oh, and while I'm giving shout-outs, while lots of the diamonds were from my stash, the background quilter's linen is from Moda's French General collection, which I got at my new favorite local-ish craft store, Fancy Tiger, along with several fat quarters, and more FQs came from my favorite (and only) very local indie craft store, Fabricate. I'm still working on a wall quilt which will hopefully be finished and posted soon. Meanwhile, here's a photo of the tool holster I through together for my sewing machine a bit ago.