My Aunt is a beautiful sewer and when she emailed me some pics of a baby quilt she made for my cousins new baby girl I just knew I had to share it with you guys!! My Aunt lives far away from me :o( We have often talked about how we wish we lived closer to eachother so we could sew together, I could learn so much from her!!

I just love this quilt. She pieced the top and did the freezer paper applique method. She said she used satin stitch on the applique so the characters would "pop". We are canadian and my cousin and his wife moved to the USA a couple of years ago...I just love how my aunt added the beavers with the canadian flag for them.

A close of up of the cute little duckie :o)

So true....

I am going to be so glad to be done work today because I come home, change and head to my sisters! It's a 3hr drive and I am gone for two nights. Tomorrow is the baby shower for Benjamin. It will be a great time. I baked my yummy cupcakes last night, made the icing all up so all I have to do is ice(baby blue icing ;o) them tomorrow.

__________________________________

The other night my husband and I went through some bins that were in storage and one of them was stuff from when the kids were babies. Little outfits, little shoes, quilts(one of them was the very first one I made..I'll post about that someday soon). In one of the bins was a stitchery I had forgotten all about. I did this when Emma was just a baby...14 years ago!!! People always told me, they will be grown up before you know it..so true. Where does the time go?

(you can click on pic if you want to see it clearer)

I was pretty impressed looking at the detail in it...did I do that?? I used to do cross-stitch alot, but I think this was my first and only big embroidery project. All this stuff went to the way side for quite a few years as I was working and raising the kids. I am so glad to have found my creative side again :o)

I figured I made a diaper/wipe tote for my soon to arrive nephew Benjamin, I better make one for my niece Isabella too! Isn't it sweet? I used most of the fabric from the past two quilts I made her. The pink flannel plaid is from a quilt I made her before she was born and other pink is from her Isabella quilt.

Today is my day off and I should be right into the cleaning etc. But no...before I drove the kids to school I had started laying out my quilt I will be sewing up. This was a unplanned project. I was at my quilt show last Friday and some vendors were there from another province and I fell in love with some charm packs(Cider Mill Road by Nancy Halvorsen), there was a pattern for purchase so I bought the coordinating yardage. I finished cutting out the sashing and setting squares last night and couldn't wait to get at it this morning. I will try and get some house work done today but there are no promises!! ;o)

Benjamin's quilt is done! Today was my day off so I went and spent the afternoon with one of my best friends. As we sat chatting I was able to finish hand stitching the binding. My sisters baby shower is next weekend. I am planning on making a diaper/wipe holder with coordinating fabrics. I decided to try something different with machine quilting..leave it to me to not master one and move on to try something new. I tried a little spiraly pattern. Notice I am not posting any close ups, lol. It turned out pretty cute over-all, even with the little flaws here and there "o)
Ummm..well you could click on the pic for a bigger version, which I suppose, will be somewhat of a close up..yikes!
This pattern is from Nancy Halvorsens Baby Winsome book.

Yay!! I just noticed that I have someone signed up for my first Pay It Forward. I just need two more PIF participants. If this is new to you as well, please see my previous post that explains more.

Sometimes it's just nice to see quick progress. I was thinking yesterday I would like to make something that could be done in a day or two instead of weeks. So I was looking through the Nancy Halvorsen "Baby Winsome" book yesterday and decided to make the diaper/wipe holder. I used the coordinating fabric I had left from the "baby winsome" quilt I have in progress. I wanted super quick results so used the zig zag stitch on most of the applique...I won't do that again ;o) Anyways, it turned out pretty dang cute. I put two empty wipe holders in it to see how much room and it can easily fit a wipe container and a couple of diapers(depending on size)

Two projects done in one week..woohoooo! This is a first :o)

Today was my day off and was I ever glad to have the whole house to myself and SEW! I usually plan errands etc for my day off but I told myself today I was spending a good part of it in my sewing room. I completed the machine quilting this morning and sewing on the binding. While having a lonnnng conversation with a friend of mine and watching a little t.v. I completed the hand sewn part of the binding..yay! I just need to add a label to the back. This quilt is for my sister who is due in June :o) Now I have to get on to the next one for her.

I will definately make this quilt again in more "traditional" baby colors for either girl or boy. I had some Baby Genius Grow Up charm squares to use up and applied it to this quilt. They weren't what I expected when ordering and was kind of stumped with what to do with them. When Jodi from http://www.simplythisthatandtheother.blogspot.com/ posted this pattern at the Moda Bakeshop http://www.modabakeshop.com/ I knew what I would use them for. It was the first time I did prairie points. I still have a long way to go with accuracy for machine quilting but I am getting the hang of it. I really hope there is a class offered on this sometime. I am in a small town where there is not much opportunity for this stuff....so for now, trial and error it is ;o)