Blog / birthday gift

While getting ready to write this post, I looked back at my email to try and figure out when I first started making this quilt. It turns out I won a copy of this pattern---Retro Flowers by Sometimes Crafter---back in 2012 (!), and I believe I started working on it not long after that. 

I worked on it here and there over the years, practicing my curves, assembling the blocks, and then piecing the quilt top, which is how it sat until a dear college friend gave birth to a baby girl this summer. I thought it would be the perfect gift for her new daughter, so I finally set to work finishing it.

I opted not to add the additional borders that the pattern called for, since it was already plenty large for a baby quilt. 

I put together a backing using coordinating teal and pink fabrics from my stash, including a super soft Nani Iro double gauze---one of my fabric types of fabrics for quilt backings!---and finally quilted and bound this long-outstanding work-in-progress.

For the finishing touch, I added a cross-stitch label with the baby's name and birth date on it. Baby quilts are my favorite things to gift, and receiving a photo of Ms. Emilia on her quilt not long after I sent it her way, completely made my day. 

A little over four years ago, I made a chevron quilt for my friends' new baby daughter. It's a quilt that I'm happy to say has been well loved and is still in rotation, so when my friends recently commissioned me to make a baby quilt for their second daughter, who was born in April, I was super excited.


I knew I wanted to do something fun, and slightly different, for the quilt design. I remembered...

I gifted my mom this sashiko pillow a few years ago, so for her birthday last month, I made her this mini quilt featuring blocks of hand-stitched sashiko embroidery.


The fabric squares were actually from a coaster kit, but since coasters tend to be in abundance in our family, I decided to use the small squares to make a wall hanging instead.


I alternated the squares with a chambray, and backed the quilt with a navy and white Japanese print. Since the squares already featured so much stitching, I kept the quilting simple and stitched in the ditch. I bound the quilt with a topographical print from Carolyn Friedlander's Architextures line.


I really love how this mini quilt turned out, and thankfully, so did my mom!

P.S. There are still a few spots left in the embroidery class that I'm teaching at Gather in Cary, NC, tomorrow night, and I'd love to have you join if you're local and interested!