dinosaur quilt for my son

I finally made a quilt for my own child. My son requested a dinosaur quilt, so I had to get creative. I looked a lots of pictures on the web for inspiration and made my own pattern. I free hand drew dinosaurs using illustrations from children's books as a guide. I used only fabric I already had in my large collection from my mother.


I stacked and re-stacked all the fabrics I had over and over to find combinations that worked. The dinosaur paper cutouts are from my freehand drawings.


Here are the final squares, but I was still undecided on the placement and color of each dinosaur.


Quilt finally done, maybe my favorite quilt I've ever made.


It's all in the details. I machine quilted the blocks and hand quilted the dinosaurs. It was a good compromise. I didn't have enough fabric for the back, so I added a color strip and appliqued my son's name, which turned out to be a good mistake.

wedding quilts

giving away the third wedding quilt this year - phew! 

In the past year, we've had three weddings in our ward. With a little grumbling, I organized the church ladies to make three wedding quilts. I farmed out cutting and sewing work to 10+ ladies and surprisingly, the quilts actually came together with minimal de/reconstruction when I sewed all the blocks together. We have some hard workers in our ward. Thanks to all the ladies that made this possible! And special thanks to Julie R for encouraging us to go the extra mile.

The first quilt was for Alyssa, who married the son of our good friend Heidi. We decided last minute to make this and threw it together very quickly, with random fabric I already had. It's not super fancy but I thought it was cozy and attractive. She was very happy to receive it, especially from a bunch of ladies that didn't know her at all.









We made the second quilt for Sabrina. I don't know her very well, but her mother Rosemary has taken good care of both my boys in the church nursery for years and we love her. Rosemary provided the fabric. We didn't have much time for this one either so we picked the yellow brick road pattern which comes together super quick.





We just finished the last one for our dear friend Meike. We had much more time for this quilt than the others, she was able to pick out the fabric and give feedback on the design before we started. Since she is moving to America and didn't have room in her suitcase for a bulky quilt, we just made the quilt top, back and binding and will have someone machine quilt it for her in the US.


Here we are giving Meike the quilt at her goodbye party.


I think the quilting will really change the look of this quilt. I wish I could see it in person when it's done.


We used an interesting technique demonstrated in this video. It's kinda annoying but I love the look of it. I want to make one for myself someday.

letting go

As I mentioned before, I have boxes lots of my mother's old fabric and I've been trying to figure out what to do with it all. Last January, I decided I'd like to make a bunch of quilts and give most of them away, either to friends or charitable organizations. I was mildly productive and finished five quilt tops over the year. I'm choosing very simple patterns so I can power through and get through all this fabric as fast as possible.

I sent two back to the US with my step-mother, where batting and backing fabric are much less inexpensive (in Switzerland, batting is about $30CHF for one quilt and the cheapest cotton fabric still runs about $15/yard). The plan is to have her church ladies tie and finish these quilts and give them to people that need them. We'll see what happens.



This quilt top is the first I sent back and I had a hard time parting with it. It was a last minute decision, right before I took my step-mom to the airport. Thus the bad photos. But this is what the my project is about. Letting go and giving back.



If anyone loves one of the other quilt tops I post here, let me know and you can probably have it.

red dress for Annabelle

I started this sweater over 18 months ago when I was pregnant, kinda hoping I might have a girl to wear it. I had a boy instead, who I love dearly. But I continued with this project to give to my niece who was due a couple weeks before my son. Well, it took me over a year to finish the darn thing, what with the sleepness nights and two children demanding my attention. After months of good intentions, I finally pushed through this last summer and sent it off a couple weeks ago. Luckily, I made it big, so it should be just the right size for this coming winter.

This was my biggest and most compicated knitting project to date. At times, I thought it would never end. It takes a lot more stitches to make a whole garment with size 3 needles than with size 7 (my usual). Plus, I completely redesigned the back to incorporate some cables to match the front. This took some complicated calculations to insure the dimensions matched the front, particularly the armholes. It was a satisfying project. I hope little Annabelle loves it (or at least her mom does).


front, obviously


back, obviously


my son modeling it with his dinosaur


my son holds still only for moment to watch the cat dash under the bed (see the tail?)


my son in tears: "Enough already! I don't like being a model and I don't want to wear a dress!"

baby sleep sack

I decided to quilt a sleep sack for my boy. I have the Halo Sleep Sack and it does the job, but I just don't like looking at it. I made a pattern from my existing blanket sleeper, but the end result turned out a little smaller than I planned. He just won't have much wiggle room. I pieced together the top from scraps. As an experiment, I handquilted the top and machine quilted the back. I was lazy and didn't baste or pin, so it's a little kittywampus. But I like it and it wasn't very hard to make.

hand quilting on right, machine quilting on left


here's the front


here's the back


test run

winter hat

see the cable flowing into the earflap - that ain't easy!

Ever since I moved to Switzerland, I've wanted this hat. I see people wearing similiar hats all the time, but I could never find the exact right one to buy. So of course, I decided to make it. I wanted this cable pattern with this shape with earflaps. This is such a basic design, but I couldn't find any usable pattern. So I made up a pattern, using my head size and gauge to graph out where to put the cables and earflaps. The hardest part was figuring out the decreases so 1) the hat shape looked right (still not completely happy with it - I wanted more pointy) and 2) the cables still looked right over the decreases. I undid several rows of the decrease at least six times to get it right and I was pretty satisfied with the result. The cables don't abruptly end but flow nicely in the top of the hat.

My favorite part is the earflap (see above). I wanted the cable to continue down the earflap, instead of having ribbing at the bottom of the hat and doing the earflap in stockinette like every other pattern I've seen. So this meant I had to reverse the cable (since you knit on the earflap after knitting the hat, knitting "upside down") and figure out where I was in the cable pattern so it twisted properly. This took four tries to get right. I was very proud of myself. It's kinda pathetic what makes me feel accomplished these days. Small victories.

yes, I look ridiculous posing here,
but I had to show off the tassels

I might still add some decorative edging and a tassel on top. But it's cold here, so I had to stop knitting and wear this thing.

my baby, my knits

is there anything better than your baby in your knits?

My baby boy is finally here and almost 3 months old already. He needed a sweater and I couldn't find anything I liked. So I frantically rush knit this Baby Yoda Sweater in sporadic 10 minute increments spread over three weeks (even a bit while he nursed on my lap - that was complicated). I love it and I love him in it. I wish I had knit more for him during my pregnancy. Time is fleeting.

pink, baby

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

one quilt down...

color, color everywhere

Hooray! I've finally finished hand-quilting my mother's quilt (the back story is here). It didn't take 100 years, only 100 hours or so. I started last August and last week I finished the last square. I am so elated! After the final stitch, I jumped up and did a victory dance. Of course, my fingers may never be the same, permanently calloused it seems.

I'm not using this quilt on the bed,
but how else can you take a quilt pic?

I love the look of hand-quilting and I get giddy just admiring my work, as amateur as it is. It's partially the look, but the stitches are also a physical representation of the time and hard work that went into it.

the lovely bumps creating by hand quilting


1 of 24 log cabin squares, shadow quilted


a little wobbly, but at least at semi-regular intervals

I've got two quilt tops waiting in the wings, but I don't know if I can do it again. My friend is having her queen size quilt handquilted in only a month by some lady in Utah for $80, apparently the going rate. As disturbed as I am about the sweatshop level hourly rate this lady is charging, I am tempted. Perhaps she's a speed quilter (but even at 5x my speed, she's still sorely underpaid). Perhaps she pays undocumented workers half her rate to do the job. Perhaps little elves come in at night and do all the work while she sleeps. Perhaps I should just quilt my quilts and let the mystery be.

On a final, slightly melancholy note... per the cliche, working on my mother's quilt has made me feel connected, connected to her, connected to the quilting community, connected to a quilting tradition. The only thing that makes me sad is that I don't yet have anyone to which I can pass on my quilting (or any of my other domestic skills). I'm saying this with shameless gender bias, assuming that neither of my boys will be interested or at least too busy playing sports or climbing mountains. Even if I had a girl, there's no guarantee she'd be interested either. Perhaps quilting makes its own connection, in its own time. I'll hope for that.

baby on the way

I'm 5 months pregnant and baby knitting is in full swing. Last year I bought one precious skein of this Rowan big wool for 25 francs. This year I realized that I couldn't even make a baby sweater with this amount so I forked out another 25 francs so I could make this little number. It's sweet and cosy. I can't wait to snuggle my baby in it next winter.