Evening's Update

I've been working on getting a few things crossed off of the 'sewing for baby' list -- and one of them was this flannel quilt. It's gone through some serious changes since I started working on it; what was going to be the front is hanging out in my scrap pile, and what was going to be the back became the front. It's been a bit of a humility check in getting too ambitious without proper planning, but fortunately I had picked up two yards of the flannel, and the scraps are large enough they may yet turn into another project -- perhaps some of those many bibs I need to be working on?

Once again, I was able to use my blank wall for basting. It sounds like the future involves me giving up my dedicated sewing space, with some of the work spaces moving to the bedroom, others to the living room, but I think I am going to have to save this big blank wall space in the future-nursery-room so I can keep basting! 

Since the basting wasn't perfect -- my pins didn't always go through the minky backing even when I knew I was touching wall before angling back towards the top to close the pin -- I hopped right into quilting this one. Folding it even overnight seemed like asking for a mess, so I didn't take the chance. I got some help removing a cranky cat from the sewing table and got to work aiming for a large, loosely diamond shaped pattern. 

Mission accomplished -- and not a pucker in sight on the back side! Quilting with minky, without a walking foot, can be a challenge (I'm told a walking foot helps, and someday I'm going to find out!) to keep everything feeding together, but I was able to work fairly slowly and carefully to try to hold my sandwich together (along with using a lot of pins). 

Since things were going so smoothly, I pulled a bunch of binding scraps from my scrap bin and wrapped this one up completely. 

None of the binding pieces match the cotton scraps I added to the top, but I think most of them coordinate fairly well. I know the dark blue/purple one is a little loud, but I just had to add it for contrast sake. 

A few of the white critters (I think they're mice and cats, but some people think they look more like bull dogs and mice) and a few of the balloons lost their pink to sun bleaching. I didn't realize the sun pouring in my window was that strong until it was too late, but I think enough of the pink remains that I'll just let it go. I only bring up the pink because I chose to include a little bit of pink in the backing (pieced minky) and if you haven't noticed the pink (understandable since there's now relatively little of it) that might seem odd. 

It's not a huge patch of pink, I actually wish I could have included a little bit more in the back. It's kind of a silly little addition brought on by using up minky scraps, but I love how well coordinated to the top it feels.  

It's just a silly little blanket -- I have a hard time calling it a quilt although I think technically it is since there is both piecing and quilting involved -- but it feels good to have something new accomplished for the nursery stash. We've got a growing pile of 'to do' things to get ready, and an increasing number of them are things I can only supervise as my lifting and hoisting ability has really diminished in the last two weeks. That's incredibly frustrating to me, but I'm focusing on taking pleasure in the things I can accomplish. 

Gotta wash it before it's really done, but I see no reason why this one should give me any issues!