Striped Baby Quilt

I’m working on refinishing the estate sale dresser (went with gray with a yellow/light gray design that I am still working out). While I do that I thought I’d share this quilt that I made earlier in the year for a good friend of mine. I got the inspiration from two places:

And I was especially inspired from this post over at Young House Love. I love the colors mixed with the white and that none of the stripes really match up. Plus its definitely gender neutral and I needed some more gender neutral ideas! My friend decided not to find out the sex of the baby, which I think is a great idea, but it makes quilt making more difficult.

I bought some white fabric for the front and green leaf fabric for the back. Fabric quarters were on sale (only $1 each) so I bought 20 to have some good variety… plus I only ended up using a little of each so I can do another project! I loved how the stripes in the picture didn’t match up so I made sure to cut my colored strips in different widths from 1.5 to 3 inches. The white strips are all 2.5 inches.

And here are some of the colors that I used…

I alternated colored strips with white strips and sewed a total of four lengths.

I pinned the four long strips together and sewed/ironed along the seams. It was starting to look so pretty!!!

Then I did my least favorite part of quilting- pinning the front to the batting and the backing. Plus I wrinkled the back and didn’t realize, so I had to pin it twice! Ugh. Once it was pinned I decided to try a meandering stitch. This is a stitch that does not go with the lines of the quilt and is random. It also is not supposed to cross over itself. I loved quilting in this style. I felt like I got to be more artistic. I also broke 8 sewing machine needles in the process.

The quilting took forever to do and I think my dog got bored.

When I finished the quilting I did my first machine binding (usually I hand bind the quilt, but I wanted to try something different). I used a turquoise fabric with brown spots. I curved the edges of the quilt and had fun with doing the machine binding too! It was a completely different look than I had done before.

Once the binding was done it was ready to go to the baby shower!

I had also bought a really cute cow costume for the baby (my friend lives on a farm and owns cows).

I made sure to sign the quilt with a fabric pen. I always want people to know where the quilt came from!

This is my favorite quilt yet. The meandering stitch really makes it pop. I hope you guys love it… I know Maggie does!

-Carolyn

Whoa Baby!

So many people I know are pregnant. I guess that comes with growing up! Two sisters that attend my church were pregnant at the same time. One had her baby girl in June (and I made her a quilt that I posted about previously). She didn’t know what she was having, so her quilt was gender neutral. The other sister is having her baby any day now, and I made her a boy baby quilt filled with blues and greens.

The pattern I used is called a nine-patch frame quilt. I love how it turned out!

First, here are the fabrics that I used

My favorite fabric was the cute blue and green one that said “I love Mommy, I love Daddy.” As soon as I saw it I knew it would be perfect for the snowball blocks (which you’ll see more of later). First step was to cut the green polka dot, dark blue, and blue plaid into strips.

Then I sewed two blue strips on the outside of a green strip. I also sewed two green strips on the outside of a blue strip (made double the amount of these). I ironed the completed strips and cut them down with a rotary cutter.

To make a nine-frame patch I sewed the newly cut strips together, making blocks that are checked.

On the outside of these nine frame blocks, I sewed a plaid strip on each side of the square. On the corners is a square of the same dark blue fabric that is on the inside of the square.

That is a finished version of one type of block that is in the quilt. The other type is a snowball block. The large part of the snowball block is made of the “I love Mommy, I love Daddy fabric” with corners from the green polka dot. I cut a large square from the love fabric and small squares from the green fabric. On the small squares I marked a diagonal line from corner to corner and used that as my sewing line.

I then sewed the small squares to each corner of a large square. Once the squares were trimmed and ironed they looked like this.

Once all the blocks were made, I sewed them into strips. Some strips had 3 checked blocks and 2 snowball blocks and some had 3 snowball and 2 checked blocks. When all the strips were sewn I laid them out on the floor to see what the quilt would look like. I made sure to put the blocks in an alternating pattern.

Then I sewed all the strips together. The hardest part of this was to make sure that my seams all matched!

I love the diagonal pattern that the blocks create! Once the top was mostly pieced I put on the borders. There was a thinner border of light blue gingham and a thicker border of the plain dark blue fabric. That is the last thing to piece on the top of the quilt.

Then comes my least favorite part- pinning the three layers together. I laid down the backing, batting, and top on the floor. Using safety pins I pinned all the layers together, working from the center out.

(And yes Maggie is quite the camera hog). Since the batting and backing were a bit bigger than the quilt I trimmed both a bit smaller than the top of the quilt. This is to allow room for binding.

For this quilt I used the stitch in the ditch method of quilting (for my next one I’m using a meandering stitch and I’m obsessed with it). Stitch in the ditch just means to follow the seams of the top of the quilt. You basically get straight lines, squares, etc.

Once the layers are quilted together, I flipped over a bit of the top onto the back and folded it over. Then I used an invisible stitch to secure the binding.

Here is the (almost) finished product (unfortunately I did not get a picture of the finished quilt because it had to be given as a gift).

I love it! And I think it would be adorable in pink and purple for a girl too!

-Carolyn

Too Many T-shirts

I was in a sorority in college. I know there are tons of stereotypes about Greek life and sororities, but it seriously made college the most fun 5 years of my life (it’s okay that I was there for 5 years… I got my masters). I didn’t join my sorority until my junior year and it is almost like I went to a completely different school during the last 3 years. Almost all of the friends from college that I am still in touch with are from my sorority… I owe it a lot!

When you’re in a sorority, there are a TON of events to go to. And I think 90% of them have a t-shirt associated with them. What’s that old lightbulb joke? Oh yeah… how many sorority girls does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 51- One to screw it in and 50 to make a t-shirt about it. After graduating college I realized I had WAY more t-shirts than I knew what to do with, and very few opportunities to wear them. What is a crafty girl to do? Make a t-shirt quilt.

The quilt was my big project during the year after graduation (AKA last year). I found a pattern that is pretty easy to follow and I was off. It was the first quilt that I made mostly on my own. I picked light pink and green fabrics (my sorority colors) and found really cool fabric from my alma mater (GO UCONN) for the back. It took me about 3 months of working on it (on and off and for little bits at a time). I love the finished product!

Once people saw my quilt, especially those sorority girls with far too many t-shirts, I was inundated with requests on how I did it or requests for me to make one for them. My policy was to show the pattern but always declined making one because it is  A LOT of work. However, a very good friend of mine (Annie) decided to move to California this April and asked me to make her a quilt since she couldn’t take all her shirts with her. I must have been feeling generous so I agreed. It was actually nice to have a project to do! Annie wanted her quilt to be a bit brighter with pink on the back, and I found an awesome pink and green flowered fabric with some gold glitter running through it. I just finished the quilt last night, so I thought I’d show all of you the finished product!

 (Maggie decided she wanted to be in the pictures too.) Annie saw the quilt via email and she loves it! Yay because it is a combined going away and birthday present! I love these quilts because they are useful, warm, and a great way to remember the amazing times I had with all my sorority sisters.

What crafty things do you guys do with your old t-shirts?

-Carolyn

Monkeying Around with a Baby Quilt

UGH! It has been farrrr too long since my last post. Weirdly enough, I miss it! I’ve been doing a ton of stuff that I want to post about, but it is mostly gifts for other people or planning for my sister’s bridal shower. Obviously, I haven’t been able to post any of that stuff. I will soon, so get excited. Until then…

A few years back my mom and I started making quilts whenever we got invited to a baby shower of a close friend or family member. It is a great tradition, but also a ton of work. We recently went to a shower of a close family friend who decided not find out the sex of the baby. This really narrows down the options for quilts, so I was hunting around for a baby quilt that would work well. I found this pattern and thought it would be perfect because every square could be a different color! It’s called the Monkey Wrench Baby Quilt (hence the blog title).

My mom and I spent about an hour and a half in JoAnn Fabric’s picking out fabrics that would go well together. We ended up with these… I especially love the brown fabric printed with “baby.”

The first step was to make half square triangles (in which you make a square that is made up of two triangles of two different fabrics). You can find the directions to make HSTs here. First draw a diagonal line on the lighter square. Sew a quarter inch on either side of the line.

Cut on the line to make two triangles. Trim the corners so they won’t show when the square is ironed.

Iron the squares flat. They’ll look like this.

Then sew the strips together.

Cut strips into 2.5 inch squares. Cut 20 squares of brown fabric for the middle of the blocks. Then you’re ready to piece the blocks together!

When all the blocks are made, lay them out to figure out what blocks look best near each other. I used ten different fabrics for the blocks, so I wanted to make sure that none of the colors were near their partners. (This picture is laid out on a bed, so ignore the comforter pattern.)

Sew in the connecting strips and border. Pin and quilt. Bind the quilt by hand or using a binding strip.

I absolutely love how this quilt turned out! It will be perfect for a boy or a girl, and I am so happy that I could give something that I made myself (with some help from my mom). Can’t wait to start the next one!

-Carolyn