Finished Twin Rainbow Quilts... and something a little vintage

The hubby finally came home early enough to watch a movie with me!  (Although, I had to watch another one this afternoon...)  I finally finished binding my second rainbow quilt (I've been calling them that even though they don't really have ALL the colors of a rainbow, but the name stuck).
I think I'm not a huge fan of sewing binding down by hand.  It takes so much longer and I'm not convinced I'm very good at it.  However, sometimes necessity calls.  I bound my puff quilt by hand because I didn't think my machine could handle all the bulk.  In this case, I decided to use 1 1/2 inch strips for my binding.  I know.  I must have been crazy - that is SUPER thin.  But I had TONS of 1 1/2 inch strips left over from making the blocks and not enough fabric to cut 2 1/2 inch strips.  So I decided to work with what I had.  I don't think it turned out too bad - plus I like the scrappy look on these quilts.  The binding is super skinny and it was a little harder to sew on by hand (more pulling), but I made it work!

As for quilting, I finally just decided to go with my regular old meandering.  And I'm glad I did.  I think it looks kind of cool with the quilting only in the sashing - makes the blocks pop.  Granted, the quilts probably needed more quilting (they are pretty puffy), but I DID do a little bit of stitching in the ditch for the inner squares. 
Here they are before I washed them:

And here they are fresh out of the drier!

Now they are SUPER puffy!

I used two different battings.  I can't really tell anymore which was which...  One was cotton/poly, the other was 100% poly

On another note, the hubby's grandpa brought down a cedar chest full of old quilts for my Mother-in-Law.  It was kind of fun looking at all the old quilts made by my hubby's great-grandmother.  There was one made from blocks each of the grandkids had painted.  It was a lot of fun to see.  But the best part?  There were a few baby blankets in there, and Grandpa INSISTED I take one for my babies!  I was quite delighted with this one

... it was made a long time ago, and it's kind of old fashioned - does that make it vintage?  I never really get these things.  The reason I LOVE it, though, is because I had a blanket just like this one growing up.  It was the one I slept with every night until I got married. :) I think mine was supposed to be blue (it is now gray), but it had that silky fabric that no one uses anymore, AND it was hand quilted.  Naturally, I am super excited that my little boys will have one of their own as well - to share, of course.

Cutting...

I did something scary (when it comes to my quilting world, that is)... I cut into two of my biggest and most expensive stacks of fabric!  Gah!  I hope I didn't mess up... Cutting fabric can be a little scary.  I measured and double checked LOTS of times.

This set is going to by for my in-laws someday (Shhh... don't tell them!) It went from this:

To this:

That's a lot of fabric!  Enough for a King size quilt!

And, of course, I did make one little mistake... I was cutting a group of "D" strips, and I made them too short!  I was so mad, because I was almost finished and didn't have a lot of big pieces left to cut new ones from.  SO I ended up piecing an extra half-inch or so into several of the mess-ups.  Hopefully it's not too obvious.  

I was all set to get started on this quilt, when my sister announced that she is ENGAGED!!!  She is getting married in December and I am beyond excited for her.  I promptly put the Fandango fabric away, got out another set of fabric, and proceeded to hack it up as well.  I hope she likes the colors. 

I went from this (well, actually - this is only half of it - I had to go and buy three more yards to make this one a King size too):

To this!

I'm so excited to be working on a new quilt!  My twin rainbow quilts are almost finished, too.  I'm just waiting for Hubby to actually get off work early enough for us to watch a movie together so I can finish binding the last one!

I started a list of all the projects I want to do.  Just to keep myself on track... maybe I need to add "new ironing board cover" to that list?  Or maybe I should focus on a few important baby items...  The list is over in my sidebar at the very bottom.  Hopefully having it on the blog will keep me motivated!

Oh, and remember this?

And remember how I had my fabric all picked out and ready to go?  Well, sadly, I made the decision that I needed to put it away and save it for another time.  I'm still planning to make the blocks, though.  My doctor seems to think that I will need to quit working at least a month before the babies come.  Maybe I will have a little time for some hand sewing then.  In the meantime, I'm just following along, enjoying what everyone else is creating!

Decisions, decisions...

I think the hardest part of the quilting process for me is deciding how to quilt a quilt!  That's why it takes me so long to finish!  (Well, that and basting...).   I've been debating how to quilt my twin rainbow quilts.  Ever since I finished my Free Motion Quilt Along, I have wanted to actually incorporate some of the designs in a real quilt!  Look, I even came up with this:

I tried about half a block, using my white thread, and it looked terrible!  I should have taken a picture.  The white thread just stands out way to much on the solid colors.  I never really anticipated the solids to be a problem.  I have a few colored threads, but I REALLY don't want to have to switch thread colors every 3 minutes, plus most of them don't match too well.
SO.  I had this great idea to try rainbow colored variegated thread.  I must have bought the wrong kind, because it was having ALL KINDS of issues in my machine.  Finally I relented and decided this thread will have to be for hand sewing ONLY.
I even tried hand quilting a few blocks:

This took FOREVER!  I'm just not that patient - plus, I REALLY don't have the right tools to hand quilt.  I suppose I could do it if I really liked the way it looks... But I'm not completely sold.  I feel like such a pessimist!
I think what I will do is get my white thread out and just do an overall meandering pattern that won't detract so much from the solid colors.  Maybe I could throw in a few stars or loops.  I can do a fancy pattern on some other quilt...

On another note, I made my first pieced backs!  I was very much set on using fabric I had ON HAND for these quilts.  I didn't have much white left, so I supplemented with the cheapo fabric I used to make my classroom's chair pockets several years ago.  This stuff has gone a long way for me!  It was kind of fun to work on the backs.  It was a good chance for me to experiment.  The whole thing was pretty improv.  I just kept adding more until I filled the space that I needed to fill.
The pictures might look a little funny - I laid them on top of my quilt tops to make sure they were bit enough.  I kinda like them!

Some of my current favorite fabrics...

I've been playing with different ideas for baby items lately.  I have so many favorite fabrics right now!  Mostly anything by Anne Kelle:

 I just LOVE these little cars/planes/trains/helicopters!

And these are my favorite animal prints:

Also, "All Star 2 from My Minds Eye":

Here are a bunch of other cute things I found:

Have you guessed yet?  Yep - the doctor thinks we are having two BOYS!  It's still pretty early, but my doctor seemed pretty confident.  I'm excited to start making things with boy fabric!  Yay!

Twin Rainbow Quilt Tops Finished

I finished my two quilt tops today!  I took some advice from a couple commenters and mixed the blocks up a little bit.  After a couple days of playing around with them, this is the arrangement I decided on.  I am just now realizing that the second quilt has a lot more green in it than the other.  Ah well.  I still like the way they turned out.

I took a bunch of pictures but wasn't quite satisfied with any of them, so I finally got the nerve to venture outside and take pictures.  I know it looks better to take pictures of things outside, but my house is kind of on a main road and our neighbors are always playing outside.  Plus, today is my day off so I don't exactly look my best.  But I did it anyway - I went into the backyard where the grass is really ugly, but at least no one could see me.  It made me kind of nervous setting my beautiful little quilts on the dirty ground, but they survived and I think the pictures show off the colors very nicely.  I guess I can do it again in the future...

Now I am going to let them sit for a bit while we go on vacation (YAY!!!), then I will come home and figure out how to quilt them.  

I'm already planning a bigger quilt using the "out-of-the-box" pattern.  I got the fabric yesterday!  I had to work a little to convince Hubby to let me buy it, but in the end - he was the one who helped pick it out!   It's from Kate Spain's Fandango line.  I LOVE it!  Isn't it pretty?  This is the first time I have actually purchased designer fabric (as in - not from Joanns).  But I think it will be worth it since this quilt is going to be for two VERY special people!

Oh yeah!  I almost forgot to tell you!  I was featured on "My Domestic Design" today.  Wahoo!  And just for fun, I'm linking up again...  Thanks Becky!

Making Progress!

I feel like I haven't done nearly enough sewing this summer!  I like to blame in on the fact that I haven't been able to pick myself up off the couch.  I was super tired, kind of sick, and just had no motivation to do anything.  I feel like I have a pretty good excuse (see my last post...).  But still.  How hard is it to do a little sewing?  (I DID finish my beanbag, which took quite a bit of sewing time.)
And then I won a giveaway - from the Ribbon Candy Quilt Company!  I was super excited.  Just in time to start a new quilt!  I have been dying to get back into making QUILTS!  I cut into it pretty quick and forgot to take a picture, so I'm stealing this one from the Ribbon Candy Blog:

It's perfect, isn't it!  I knew right away what I wanted to use it for, but I couldn't make up my mind between a regular square-in-square block and the more complicated out-of-the-box block.  So I decided to do them both.  Of course!  I am having TWINS, after all (yay)!  So I decided to make two matching baby quilts.  The colors are perfect, since we still don't know if we are having boys or girls.
And then Amy announced that it was time for another "One Thing, One Week" challenge.  It was just the boost I needed to get myself off the couch and moving around again.  I wasn't sure how I would be feeling (as far as morning sickness), and summer school has started up, so I only committed to making one set of blocks. 
Luckily, I have been feeling MUCH better lately!  I think I am moving into my 2nd trimester.  Wahoo!  I have a little bit more energy and I don't feel sick anymore.  So I got lots of stuff done this week, AND I finished EARLY!
I managed to make ALL of the blocks for both quilts.  Here they are:

 Looking at them now, I think I like the second one the best.  I found this block somewhere online about a year ago and now I can't find it!  SO I just made it up based on the picture I saved.

Now all I need to do is just add white sashing and sew them all together.  And quilt them.  Any suggestions on how to quilt them?   I am thinking of doing big stars or flowers inside the inner squares on the first quilt.  Other than that, I have no idea - less complicated would be better.  I think I have enough fabric left for a scrappy binding too.  It feels good to be making quilts again!

I'm linking up to Amy's Challenge.  You should go check out what everyone else did!

The Real Reason I Started Sewing...

It's time for the truth to come out!  My whole life I have wanted more than anything to be a MOM.  When the hubby and I first got married, we knew we wanted to wait a little while to have kids, though.  We were both still in school and I was going to be a teacher - not the best source of income, plus I wanted to have a year or two to try it out and see if I really liked it or not.
WELL.  About two years ago, I finally sat him down and we made a plan.  We weren't QUITE ready (hubby still had a long way to go in school), but we made a PLAN!  That was a good feeling.  And then the time came when it was almost time to start trying.  I was so excited I almost couldn't stand it!  Hubby went to China for two weeks and I decided to occupy my time making a few baby sized quilts - just for the fun of it.  I had already made my first jean quilt a few years before and remembered some research I had done about rag quilts.

So that is where I started.  This is what I came up with first.  I'm kind of embarrassed by it, but there you have it.

Then Hubby came home and I convinced him to let me make another one - he even came with me to pick out fabric.  This was my second shot at a rag quilt.  Much better.

And from then on, I was hooked.  I discovered the world of quilt blogs and haven't turned back since!

But the whole obsession started with a desire to make something in hopes that we would have a baby soon.
Well, now we are another year later and I am happy to report that my second dream (second to marrying my sweetheart) has come true!  I'm going to be a mom!  And the best part is... there are two!  I couldn't be more excited.  I just started a new quilt project - matching baby quilts.  Rainbow colored for now, since we don't know the genders yet.  One of these days, I will have to try making some little clothes!  I hope we have at least one girl...
I made these little stockings to tell our parents with.  We gave two to each of the Dads for Father's Day.  It took both of them awhile to figure out what they were for, but once they did, they loved them!  I'm due right around Christmas, so I figured this was the perfect way to make our big announcement.  Plus, I got to try out freezer paper piecing for the first time - it went great!

And for those who want to see, here is our babies' first picture.  Aren't they amazing?