I'm not having a girl, but lots of my friends are. So I can throw my pink passion into some baby quilts. Here's the first in the series (for Astrid, who inspired me to start blogging):
Jacob's Ladder pattern in pink and green
Per usual, I accidently cut two solid green squares too small and didn't have any extra (I tried piecing tiny bits together, but it was hopeless). So I couldn't complete one of the patches. But this turned into a happy accident. I simply appliqued a four-clover (see below) in the substitue patch, giving a break to the symmetry of the piece and a little extra personal touch.
lucky four-leaf clover saves the day
I'm also using these small projects to practice my machine quilting skills. I was hoping that machine quilting would be so easy and quick that it would lure me away from the ridiculously time-consuming, but irresistably lovely hand quilting. Well, it certainly is quicker but so much harder than I expected. I'm a sloppy sewer and I have a bad habit of pulling the fabric where I want it to go, rather than letting the machine do most of the work. This is diasterous with machine quilting, which requires that all layers be fed at the same rate. So after a couple rows I realized that the top was bunching up in places. It wasn't so bad that I needed to rip it out and the errant fluffiness decreased significantly after washing. But I realized I have a lot to learn before I attempt a full-size quilt or quilt any design besides straight rows.
all pinned and quilted
