A very Super Baby Present

Finally!  I've got it all put together!!  And just in time for V's new baby Rafael!!  I love how this turned out!  I opted to use a blue flannel on the back and around the pieced blocks with no batting to make this a usable easy quilt.  I did line the blocks with an interfacing to support the structure and then finished it with some tie-dye binding.  It was my first time using any separate binding and I followed THIS tutorial which was SUPER easy and error free!

 And - she loved it!  It was super fun working with all of these patterns!  These patterns were created and provided for FREE by Liljabs and SewhookedJen over at Fandominstitches.com

Coming up with a plan - K's quilt

So it's been a little while since blocks have started coming in for K's quilt, and I've been figuring out how to put them on the shelves.   This week I took down my PoD2K15 Dark Arts quilt from my wall board and started configuring the layout.... a quick peek...

I like how it's coming together.  There has been some conversations on the best ways to quilt this type of project, and this being my 6th version of this quilt (lol that made me chuckle), I am creating a tutorial on how I'm putting it together so keep your eyes open! (I'll update this with a link when it's done) :)

Making the Mermaid - K's quilt

My friend K and I are a lot alike - we're both landlocked mermaids who wish we could spend more time at the beach and near the waves.  I knew I couldn't pull this quilt together without adding at least one personal mermaid touch - and so I hunted down THIS pattern over at fandominstitches.com and put her together.  (side note:  I would love to do a set of these, one in reverse for some bookends maybe?)

I always start by laying out fabrics to play with color and contrast.  The pattern has her nekkid-ish, so I revamped it a little and added a clamshell (that was seriously a lot of work - if I do add these as bookends on something I'm doing, I'll plan to give her a washed out green textured skin and call it a day)

3 1/2 hours of work later - and I finally got her put back together.  I always have this angst about remembering to give myself the 1/4 inch seam allowance so I can sew it back together!  but it worked.

Isn't she lovely?  She measures out about 7.5 inches tall, which made putting her in to a block with some of our fun gift quilt mail pretty easy! :)

Working on layouts

Probably the hardest job in all of this is laying out the squares and figuring out how to put it all together.  I did not put these up on my hanging working board as I worked so was a little afraid I'd have too much of one color or too many of the same type of things clumped together. So despite my initial sketches and the like to the floor we go to figure it out!