i can't decide

Call me 'nesty', but I can't stop changing the sheets on the baby's crib. Yes, apparently this is one of my most pressing full-term pregnancy dilemmas. At night and early in the morning I lay in bed (dutifully on my left side) and contemplate the intricacies of life like "Do we want to use the bumpers I made a few months ago?" and "Does that yellow sheet look right with that brown crib skirt?". Luke very patiently listens to my banter and occasionally mutters in response, which I truly appreciate. I know it's ridiculous, but how do I make it stop! I think I've finally settled on the brown checked sheet with the brown and teal crib skirt. Combined with the brown crib and brown wood panelling (circa 1960) I can see how it might be a bit brown. But seeing as the baby is set up in the sunniest room in the house, and we have white walls and some white furniture on the other side of the room there is actually a balanced feel to the room that makes me glow with pleasure. Besides, I have a cool super-secret project that I intend to hang directly above the crib which is both colorful and exciting. I'll give you a hint.

Don't you just love the checked quilt that's currently draped over the backside of the crib? That was a surprise gift from Luke's mom when we announced the coming baby. It was handmade by a family friend for Luke when he was a wee one, and I think it's absolutely adorable.

His parents also passed along a wonderful baby dresser that was passed along to them years and years ago. No one is quite sure how many babies this beauty has been through, but I'm so glad the Little Oyster gets to be one of them. I think it's perfect for our space and it obviously helps to counteract some of that brown. The night they dropped it off at the apartment I loaded it with all variety of adorable onesies, diapers and other baby goods. Now I go through the drawers several times a day and touch all the things that are going to become such a central part of our life in a few weeks. After a second baby shower with his side of the family last weekend we are feeling much more prepared, both practically and emotionally. Already I'm realizing how important it is to have relationships with women who've borne and raised children. Not only do they know what things are baby 'essentials', but they also know all the right things to say to encourage and support a new mom. I'm beyond grateful for the mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, friends, and other women in my life, and I'm proud to be counted as one of them.

to 'cap' it all off (get it? it's a pun)

Last weekend was the stuff dreams are made of. It was a grand trifecta of time with my side of the family, sewing and crafting, and shopping. Not only did I get to see each and every last one of my nieces and nephews throughout the course of the weekend, but I also got to spend some quality time with my mom centered around all things textiles.

A friend at work tipped my mom off to one of the best-kept fabric-related secrets in Lancaster County: the MCC quilt preview. Besides a room filled with absolutely fantastic hand-quilted projects there was a sale of glorious donated treasures such as (and I quote) "vintage textiles, linens, cutter quilts and unfinished projects." Can you even imagine a room full of rare fabric yardage, fat quarters, pieced quilt blocks, embroidered napkins and even old quilt tops in need of patching or minor repairs?! It makes me antsy for it's counterpart relief sale next month!

We spent the better part of the morning sifting through piles of lightly used crafting supplies and ultimately I emerged with a lovely stack of yardage that will be used in a project for our new apartment. Obviously I wouldn't leave without a few selections that I simply found too good to pass by, and who even knows where those fabrics will end up!


Check out the beautiful animals and details on this one piece:

Then my sneaky mother surprised me with a hand-sewn vintage baby cap that she found buried away at the sale. All it needs is a gentle hand-washing and an iron to the lip. Whether the Little Oyster is a boy or girl, our baby will proudly sport this little masterpiece over the summer.

When I got back to our apartment and added the fabric finds to my sewing box I was surprised how these vintage patterns and colors stood in contrast to my usual bold or "modern" selections. Perhaps my tastes are evolving a bit, or maybe I'm just getting old. Speaking of old people, look at this amazing cap my mom knitted last month! She is so stylin'!

Sunday Photo Session

Recently several friends sent me one of the best gifts I could ever dream of: photos of cute babies laying on/beside/wearing sewn items crafted by these very hands. Behold!

Becca's niece kicking her shoes off after a long day of being a baby

Emily's goddaughter lounging in safari style


Alyson's next-of-kin staying cozy and stylish

While I'm at it, I can't help but include this picture of Becca's niece at her first photo shoot this winter. I'm not exactly sure, but something about the scene makes it just about my favorite baby picture of all time. The snow, the old yellow chair, the bonnet, the baby posing just right- it's wonderful!

Photo credit: Jodie Martin Photography

Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?

I am a very fortunate woman, very fortunate indeed. For, you see, I have a host of friends who a) put up with my frequent sewing chatter b) appreciate and inspire my creative experiments and c) present cloth offerings in abundance.

My dear friend, Sarah, is especially skilled in all of the the aforementioned. In some ways she and her husband Matt started my re-interest in sewing last year, when they announced that they were with child, and I embarked upon my first quilting project in many a-year. Now their adorable son is an adorable 8 months old, and no longer in need of the receiving blankets of his youth. For this reason Sarah passed 4 of them along to me to be used for re-purposing purposes.

The receiving blankets are so snuggly and soft compared to the quilting cottons I usually employ, and they quickly brought to mind the swatches of some cushy brown fleece I have left over from my nephew's baby quilt. I knew I wanted to use very basic patchwork square (3.5"x3.5") but I also knew that there had to be more to the quilt top than just a bunch of (barely meeting up squarely at the edges) squares. Then I remembered this elephant pattern from my favorite quilt book that might fit all my needs.


"Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?" was a completely cost free project. That is to say:
1. The receiving blankets came from Sarah.
2. The sheet I used as a stabilizer mysteriously appeared in our bedroom closet and neither Luke nor I know where it came from.
3. The brown fleece and green binding fabrics came from my box of scraps.
4. Etc.


One of Luke's ESL students will give birth within the next week or so, and their first daughter will receive this blanket made of receiving blankets. It's a bit unfortunate that my warmest and cuddliest quilt yet will be given in the dead of summer, but I'm sure it'll make a cute wall hanging if worst comes to worse.

one wild and precious life

When my old friend Emily requested a baby quilt for her cousin's little offspring I was psyched. When she suggested an African animal/safari theme I was ecstatic. Not surprisingly, I bought a bit too much yardage of the Michael Miller fabrics used in Differing Rays of Light (I have to learn the fine art of measuring my fabric needs with great precision), and I was looking for an excuse to design another quilt with them. On top of that, another friend (Megan) recently bequeathed unto me a host of material she bought in a marketplace whilst living in Uganda. I quickly computed the following awesomeness equation:

safari fabric + Ugandan fabric = awesome African-themed baby quilt at the request of a friend whose heart, in many ways, is still in Africa (Tanzania, to be exact).

I went about the business of graphing a quilt top based on a series of 5 1/2" blocks. I decided to try the 'crazy 9-patch quilt block', which is a design I've seen in many beautiful quilts lately. At first glance it seems like a challenging undertaking, but in reality it's really quite simple.












The blocks are placed in a strategic pattern with Kona Ash for the sashing, and a border in Kona Lime that is 2" wide on two sides and 1" wide on the opposite sides.



















The backing to "one wild and precious life" was a great big surprise to me.



I decided to try to use up whatever substantial pieces of the safari prints and solids I had left over, but the scraps' strange sizes left me limited in my design choices. In fact, they are cut and arranged in the only way I can mathematically conceive them fitting together and creating a 41" square quilt. I'll be honest, it was a close one with very little fabric to spare, but I think that in the end I might actually like the back better than the front. But why play favorites?

Emily's cousin's baby's quilt is named for the last line in Mary Oliver's "Summer Day". Oh, I like it so very much:

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

A Timbered Choir

"A Timbered Choir" was a work of brainstorming collaboration with my friend, Becca (of "My Little Matroyna" fame). We adapted a pattern for a crib bumper from a baby-quilt book. We were agreed that the mix of embroidery and applique was simple, cute, and a resourceful way to use smaller scraps of some really nice fabrics I have just waiting for such a time as this.



There are 8 woodland creature blocks featuring Denyse Schmidt's "Hope Valley" greens. Most of the animals were straight from the crib bumper pattern, and I added some evergreen trees, a sun, a flying bird, and a bear to complete the set.




I machine quilted across the vertical stripes, and made a faux binding with 2 1/2 inch leaf print. The back of the quilt was finished with a muted green fabric where I embroidered a leaf and an acorn to resonate with the woodland theme on the front.

"A Timbered Choir" is named for the poem by one of my favorite authors, Wendell Berry. In this case the correlation between the quilt and the poem end there, since this sweet and light-hearted design stands in contrast to a stark and admonishing work by Berry. But the world needs a bit of both of these realities, so I'll let this inherent contradiction rest as it is.

my little Matryona

What could be better than a quilt and a pillow? How about a quilt that IS a pillow!! That's right, and herein lies the genius of a "quillow", which is a quilt with a pouch sewn to the back so if you fold it into thirds it can be turned into a pillow. I like to refer to them as the popples of the quilt world.

This is my first attempt at a "quillow", and I think it has quickly become one of my favorite projects. This was a commissioned piece for a dear friend who gave me full freedom to create a quilt for her daily use. She studied in Russia and has a sincere fondness for Russian history and culture. So when I found this nesting doll (matryoshka in Russian) fabric by the Japanese company, Kokka, I knew I wanted to use it for her quilt.

The design for the project went through several stages, and even I was unsure what it would look like until it was finished. In the end, I cut out eight separate rectangles (4 are larger and 4 are smaller), created borders for them of a dark brown and a teal , and finally placed them alternately in a sea of a cream colored muslin. For the outer border I sewed strips of the colored fabrics at 45 degree angles (as though making a binding). The pillow section of the quillow is appliqued with three dolls I cut from the Kokka print, attached with fusible webbing, and used a simple zigzag stitch to secure them to the fabric.

I think what draws me to this particular design is how it manages to look both old fashioned and modern simultaneously. The colors are exactly the dark and rustic tones I (inexplicably) associate with old Mother Russia, yet the design is simple with straight lines and without too much clutter. The name for it comes from a poem by Teresa Pfeifer called "Matryoshka".

Please Look After This Bear

Throughout this quilting evolutionary process, I am finding that the most memorable and eye-catching projects seem to be the ones with the most simple detail. Essentially, my eyes tend to like clean lines, simple patterns and prefer to take in one main idea.

That's why I loved this quilt pattern from the moment I saw it. The entire thing is essentially a yard and a half of fabric with two lines cut through the middle, and two strips of patchwork mending the angled cuts. So simple! I chose to use this bold and colorful Paddington Bear print that I got for a great deal at a fabric warehouse, and supplemented it with all variety of scraps sitting around from past projects. The backing is a rich, dark brown color, but I wanted to create some continuity between the bright front and the dark back. So I sliced the brown fabric at an angle and made a third patchwork strip, adding some scraps of the Paddington fabric to "mimic" the front. To quilt the layers together I hand-knotted using two different skein colors for each knot (3 strands of each color). And to finish it off I chose a dark teal print (left over from yet another project), which keeps the quilt both gender-neutral and bright.

For the poor souls out there who've never encountered Paddington Bear, he is the adorable, stuffed hero created by the British author Michael Bond. He is a small bear from "Darkest Peru" who totes his battered suitcase containing several jars of marmalade, and wears a tag around his neck that reads "Please Look After This Bear". In his very first childrens' book adventure (1958), he stows away on a ship that ultimately lands in London's Paddington Station. And to his delight the Brown family discovers him in the station, dubs him Paddington, and welcomes him into their home. Perhaps some child will soon snuggle up into this quilt (so named "Please Look After This Bear") with his or her very own copy of Paddington Bear!

all sweetness and wings

Without doubt, "all sweetness and wings" is my most time-consuming and intricate quilt to date; but for many reasons it is one of my favorites. It is a pleasure to look at all the different swatches of fabric that have gone into it, and recognize them from past projects and fabric-bundles from friends. There are 10 insects on this quilt, and each one was cut from scraps and attached to the fabric using fusible webbing and machine embroidery (another apt name for this project would have been "satin stitch galore!") I was pleasingly surprised to see that each bug has a unique facial expression, which happened quite unintentionally. Yet the result is a slew of colorful, individualized bugs, ranging in emotion from startled to coy. I machine quilted the layers together echoing the right angles and straight lines of the seams, and finished it off with a chocolate brown binding.

This quilt is also special in that it will likely be my first one to sell publicly, as it will be displayed in a Midtown art show in the month of April. Oh, and so as to give credit where credit is due: the quilt's name is derived from a Mary Oliver poem called "Happiness" where she writes, "I saw her let go of the branches, I saw her lift her honeyed muzzle into the leaves, and her thick arms, as though she would fly – an enormous bee all sweetness and wings"

Mr. McGregor's Garden

I decided to pay homage to the ghosts of quilt-making past. That is to say, create a more "traditional" quilt, just to get a taste of it. I found this soft, endearing Beatrix Potter fabric at a local warehouse, and thought it would go beautifully in a traditional, country-looking quilt. In fact, this whole project always brings to mind my grandmother, who epitomizes the country, fable feel to me.

I have dubbed this quilt "Mr. McGregor's Garden", in honor of Peter Rabbit and his vegetation exploits. Paired with a Beatrix Potter boardbook, I think this quilt will make a lovely baby gift!

Chocolate Mint

Last spring was awfully exciting, when I found out that two sister-in-laws, from opposite sides of the family, were expecting. And with due dates only days apart!

I decided to create matching quilts for the newest members of my family, and chose more gender-neutral colors for these quilts since neither couple planned to discover their baby's gender until the birthday.

The center blocks in Chocolate Mint are a toille print with gardening and see-sawing rabbits. For time's sake I decided to create a border instead of binding. The border and backing are made of a wonderfully soft and cuddly brown fleece.

a new hobby is born!

I suppose it's time I started to archive some of the projects I have completed over the past few months. It's been a year full of pregnancies and births in my world, inspiring a slew of baby quilts (quite possibly the quickest and most gratifying project there is!) I have been messing around with all different styles and techniques, graduating from knot quilting to machine quilting, and even trying a hand at some applique!

Here is my first one from the summer: Sammy's Turtles. I used a basic patchwork design I sketched ahead of time. It is knot quilted and the binding is hand stitched. I just love these adorable, bold colored turtles for a friend's baby boy.