This and that

Well, there haven't been many craft photos recently, because I'm sort of in the middle of several big projects. The first is this quilt of Aaron's. You see, every time I've finished a quilt for the last eight or nine months, he's asked, "Is THIS one for me, mom?" And I've had to say no. So after Olivia's quilt, I promised him that the next quilt I finished would be his quilt. Of course, I've also been playing around with Emma's quilt, and I also promised my friend a picnic quilt in time for the nice weather (that would be last week) so I've gradually piecing that one, too. So instead of working on one or possibly two quilts at a time I find myself working on three quilts plus quilt blocks for my quilting bee, plus curtains. This means when I go down to sew in my precious few moments of sewing time, I spend about 20 min. deciding what to work on, about 10 min. sewing, and then the baby wakes up / gets bored / a fight breaks out / someone gets hungry or has an accident and that's the end of my sewing time.

Fortunately, Aaron's quilt now looks like this:
All basted and half quilted. In fact, last night I finished the quilting, so I just have to bind it now. This is such a cute, cheery quilt and he loves it and keeps asking, "Can I sleep with it now, Mom?"

I'll show the picnic quilt when I'm done it (only ties left to do now), but the other things I'm slowly tinkering with is putting a back together for this:

Isn't it a beauty? Made by the ladies of the Stash Busting Bee International. I was supposed to get 12 blocks back, but a lot of generous people sent two, so I was able to make it 4 blocks by 4 blocks and even had to leave one out (sorry, Shannon, but I included your funky 5-sided one) and I shall use the extra block and scraps to make a doll quilt.

I think I'm going to try hand quilting it, so I can have a pick-up-and-put-down project upstairs (and also because I think season 6 of Project Runway must be out of video by now and so its time for another PR marathon). So I've been playing around with what to put on the back. I had a selection of nice soft, cute pinks and greens and browns picked out, but I decided to get Emma's opinion.

So I brought her down to the ironing board and showed her the fabrics, hoping she would grab at a few and give me a hint. She completely ignored them. Not even a glance. She was more interested in my Ikea mini-drawers. So we went over and looked at those, and then I started thinking about something else I needed for a different project and I pulled out one of my bins and the moment I did she reached out a grabbed . . .

my pink and purple Good Folks. And Amy Butler (which didn't make the cut in the end). The girl has a mind of her own and vibrant, expensive taste already. Which is okay, even though I JUST found those Chocolate Lollipop purples (the pink and purple swirls at the top and the big flowers at the bottom) and those Mendoccino prints are highly coveted and out of print. Because I'm trying to be all about using my fabrics, right? Didn't I buy them to use? Isn't a quilt we use every day a better place for them than a bin where they just get patted and then carefully folded away again?

Its just that once you use something it no longer has all the possibilities . . . and I do so love possibilities. Oh well, there will be scraps. And it will make a fun, if mis-matching back for Emma's quilt. And she was cooing and chattering away while riding on my back as I put these on my design wall, so me thinks she will like it.

And I do need to use up some fabric so I have room for all these:
because I have 3 baby quilts I've like to make (twin boys and a mystery baby) so of course I need new fabric. Isn't it ridiculously cute?