The Twin Twin Quilts: Broken Herringbone and Jungle Path

It's time to share with you the quilts I made for my boys' third birthday back in December.  We got the boys their first big boy beds - twin size - and of course I had to make some quilts to go on them!  I finished these just under the wire, but finally just now went outside to take some pictures of them.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a lot of process pictures along the way.  Although I did blog about their beginning HERE (a long time ago...).

To make these two quilts I bought a fat quarter bundle of the entire Cruiser Blvd line by Sheri McCulley for Riley Blake (which we love because the Hubby is a transportation engineer and this fabric is full of road signs and vehicles and stuff).  Then I split it into two colorways.  Green for Jaxson and Blue for Bronx.  So their quilts ended up looking pretty different, but most of the actual print designs are the same.  I narrowed the quilt designs down to 7 or 8 and the Hubby picked his favorite two.

Here they are!

First up, Jaxson's Green Broken Herringbone quilt.  Inspired by this quilt, block tutorial found HERE.

These are pretty much the only "process" photos I took.  I finished Jaxson's quilt top and he wanted to test it out.  I think it will be big enough!

Of course, Bronx had to get in on the action too!  Both boys really loved watching their quilts come together.  Luckily, the each claimed one of them and attached to it right away.  :)

This particular block yields LOTS and LOTS of funky shaped trimmings.  Not one to waste fabric, I pieced all the funky pieces into four rows and used them to make the quilt a little longer at the top and bottom.

Finished!

Close up:

For the quilting, I decided to honor the Hubby's wishes and went with really simple straight line quilting.  Basically I just stitched 1/4" from the edge on the inside of each sashing strip.  The back looks kinda cool.

I had a TON of sewing machine issues (and ended up taking it to the shop the day after finishing) with this quilt, but I had to push through them because I was on such a tight deadline at the end there.  The wonky, wrinkly sashing quilting bugs me but I'm pretty sure Jaxson doesn't care.  ;) 

My FAVORITE part of the whole quilt!  I traced the boys' hands onto a corner and quilted around them, then stitched their names inside.  My original plan was to do the hand prints Trapunto style, but - well, I forgot.  And this picture is super fuzzy, but it's the only one I have of Jaxson's hand print right now.  I love that I have something to document how big they were at the time this quilt was made! 

And I very belatedly remembered to add the labels, but I did!  Those yellow pieces are literally the last pieces I have left from the bundle!  I'm ALL about using every last piece of fabric if I can!  Sometimes it just takes a little bit of planning.  
Also, Jaxson's quilt is bound with this little hexagon print.  Hand sewn to the back, of course.  :)

The back is a mixture of large cuts I picked up at Joanns.

And now Bronx's Quilt:

The pattern for this one is called Jungle Path and can be found at the Moda Bakeshop HERE.

A close up.  I just love those arrows and road signs and little cars!

Here is Bronx's little hand.  So sweet!

Bronx's quilt is bound in this striped/road print.  I love it!  I actually made both bindings completely on the bias using THIS awesome tutorial.  

I was able to find a bigger cut of this blue fabric, so less piecing for the back!  Win!

It's hard to see it here, but for the quilting on Bronx's quilt I once again kept things straight and simple.  I stitched down the middle of all the white sashing and added a little extra quilting to the center four patches.  

And here they are on their big boy beds!  The boys did an amazing job transitioning from cribs to beds and they love their quilts!  Whew!

Quilt stats:

Started: January 2014 (cutting started June 2014)

Finished: December 5, 2014

Fabrics: Cruiser Blvd by Sheri McCulley for Riley Blake

Batting:  Warm N White

Finished size: 

Jaxson's Green Broken Herringbone: 61" x 91"

Bronx's Blue Jungle Path:  57" x 89"

Recipient: Jaxson and Bronx

Methods used:  Piecing, Free Motion Straight Line Quilting (on my home machine)

Binding:  Machine stitched to front, hand stitched to back 

Previous Posts: HERE 

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Cruiser Blvd: The Beginnings of Two Toddler Quilts

Well, it's almost time.  At some point in the next several months (hopefully not too soon) my boys will be ready to graduate from the crib and move to toddler beds.  This means they will need new quilts for their brand new beds!  Yay! 

 I spent some time during our Christmas break looking for ideas.  I decided it was time to try making something with a Jelly roll so I pinned tons of jelly roll quilts on my Pinterest board.  Then I picked 7 or 8 and mocked up generic versions in Excel and let the Hubby pick two.  Sometimes he complains that I ask for his advice but never actually use it (this doesn't ever happen to you, does it?), so I am sticking to the ones he chose - and I'm super excited about it!  He picked Jungle Path and Broken Herringbone:

THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO.  CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO VISIT MODA BAKE SHOP

THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO.  CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO VISIT MOLLI SPARKLES

And then I got to pick out fabric!  I decided I wanted to make two quilts using different patterns, but the same fabric line.  Matching, but not matching, you know?  That's the way we do it around here with our twins.  :)  Once again, I found 6 or 7 lines that I liked and left it up to Hubby to choose.  He chose Cruiser Blvd by Sheri McCulley for Riley Blake, which is perfect!  The Hubby is a transportation engineer, so he loves all the road signs and stuff.

And the best part is, I found this FULL FQ bundle on clearance at Fabric Fly Shop.  Since I would have needed three jelly rolls to have enough fabric for both quilts, and this bundle cost about the same as one jelly roll (don't hate me...), I jumped on it.  So I'll be making two jelly roll quilts with fat quarters.  It's all good.

I was SO excited to get this package in the mail!  (I have never bought an entire line of fabric before.  Usually I buy only what I need for a specific project.)  When it arrived, I didn't even wait to open it and spread it all out on my kitchen table to admire it.  :)  And then I put it all back together and took some nice pictures of it...

 

I've decided to do one mostly green quilt and one mostly blue quilt.  As of right now, these are my fabric groupings.  The green one will be Broken Herringbone and the blue one will be Jungle Path.  I'm going to use the little hexies and the stripes for binding (the two yellow prints are leftovers). 

What do you think?  I'm still a little unsure.  Is the pop of red in the green stack too much?  Should I switch it for one of the yellows?

On another note, the other day when I was working on bee blocks, one of my boys came in to "play" with me.  We'd been struggling quite a bit with nap time and I kept ending up with two toddlers taking naps at DIFFERENT times (NO FUN).  So one day while Jaxson was napping, I brought Bronx in to sew with me.  I sat him on my lap and chain pieced a bunch of blocks while he watched.  Then while I was ironing them, he went through one of my fabric drawers and brought over a pile of fabric to "sew" (don't worry - I took the needle out as soon as I realized what he was doing and of course the machine was turned off).  At first he put a piece of fabric up on the extension table and waited for something to happen.  It was so cute.  When the fabric refused to move by itself, he reached up and started pushing it through like I did (hence the big pile of fabric on the other side).  He would also wiggle the presser foot with his fingers because he knew it was supposed to go up and down while the fabric moved through.  I think he's a cute kid.  Boots in the house and all.

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