It's a Baby!

 I haven't made a baby quilt in years. One of my mother's friends recently became a grandma. Yeah, my mom is in her early 90s. So, most of her friends should be great grandmas. This person is about my age. She became a dear neighbor to my parents decades ago. She still chats with my mom even though my mom has dementia.

Every so often I'm in touch with my mother's friend. When I heard that she had become a grandma for the first time I was so happy for her! She stated that for the next six months she will be babysitting the granddaughter.

                  

About seven years ago, my mother gave me her fabrics since she was no longer quilting/sewing. Dementia had already stopped that activity for her. Well, knowing that my mom would have given her friend's daughter a baby gift, I decided to give the friend the gift. I collected some fabrics from mom's stash to use in a baby quilt that the proud grandma can use while babysitting her granddaughter. Yes, this is a baby gift for the grandma!

I also looked through my stash to see what fabrics would add to the cuteness of the quilt. I had enough flannel fabric from a pervious project that became the backing fabric.

Baby quilts go together quickly! Looking forward to making more in the future.

Sparrows

 In April, the sparrows frequent my yard! I love watching them hop around the yard looking for food.

When I saw that Lindsey from Pen + Paper was going to do the Sparrow Quilt Along and Keepsake Quilting sold the pattern and kit for this too cute quilt, I was all in for my first quilt along. 

Or almost! I'm not good at group projects or totally following directions. 

After figuring out the directions for cutting of the fabrics and assembling some of the blocks, I decided that for me to do the type of quilting I wanted to do I would need to do the quilt-as-you-go method to make the machine quilting easier.  Alterations were made in the directions to assembling. 

I sandwiched the layers with the batting being an 1/2 inch smaller than the top all around. A decorative stitch was used around the three triangles.

And the birds' bodies and tails were quilted with curves. 

After all the birds were quilted, I started assembling the blocks together. This was done like a normal assembling using 1/4 stitch. There is no stashing on the top.  I did lose points to the triangles. The pattern needs adjustments for it to work well as a quilt-as-you-go.

The back side has the stashing to hide the seams.

I decided to use a binding with a flange; this might become my way to do the binding work this year.

Sparrows now decorates the back of my sofa. Spring is officially here!