Some bright colors for a rainy month

This is a quilt I made in a Curvalishish class at Cambridge Quilt Shop with a family friend. I was intimidated about sewing curved pieces, but this method was pretty easy and I loved that it was all free-hand with my rotary cutter. The hardest part about this quilt was choosing how the blocks would be laid out. I nearly went crazy, it was like a sudoku puzzle - this green shouldn't be next to this other green, but this purple is above this other purple. It was fun and I love how it came out. I also got to use up a lot of fabrics that I really like but that had been hanging around for awhile.

This picture is so awful - I didn't realize how much the creases were going to show! I just want to smooth it out!!

I have been thinking lately about how my closet can be such a good place for quilt color combo inspiration. This quilt is a good example since it's made up of all my typical go-to colors. Nettie wrote about this same type of idea, getting inspiration from her dishes. I guess we all have colors we're drawn to, but my current project strays from my "usual" quite a bit. More on that to come...

This is my favorite block of them all. Every block is unique which was fun to put all together. I loooove this navy fabric. I feel so bad because I cannot remember the designer's name for the life of me (if you know, please tell me!), but I went back and bought a whole yard to have "just in case." Edit: the above fabric that I love so much is by Erin McMorris for Free Spirit. It's from the Park Slope collection. I just found it on sale here, but I really can't justify buying even MORE for my stash! :)

I used this batik for the backing. It's from Jo-Ann's Indonesian batik line. They're starting to have some higher quality fabrics it seems, which is nice because I can still use my coupon!

Thanks for looking!

p.s. what a difference taking the photographs outside makes! You all are so smart! :)

Okay, technology, here I come!

Okay, uploading pictures is really not that hard, so I'm glad I finally got around to doing it! I really want to share with you my most recent (finished) project and then I'll show you some more stuff later. I work at an all-women's office, where most people are in their 20s and 30s. Them's baby-makin years so I have really enjoyed making a few baby quilts in the past few months. They're so quick and easy and a good chance to try out a new pattern (and use up some scraps!) I was happy to know the gender for this quilt - although a gender neutral quilt is kind of a fun challenge too! I love a pieced back and never even thought of that before finding Amandajean's blog. My mom thought I was a genius, but it seems like most people do that these days - and I love it! It's almost double-sided this way. I got to use up a lot of scraps and fabrics I've had hanging around for a long time. I hope the new mom (and baby Celia) love this as much as I do!

This one really shows the quilting. This was the first time I didn't stitch-in-the-ditch and I'll never go back to that. I used painters tape as a guideline and it was pretty easy! I can't lower the feed dogs on my machine, but once I have some time I'm going to play around with some different quilting styles. In the mean time, I love the way this came out and couldn't believe until I did it how much the quilting can really add to the quilt. I love how crinkly it is too after washing it. Next time I'll make sure the creases aren't so obvious from when I folded it!

Thanks for looking!
Meaghan

I didn't forget about my new blog...

So I was soooo gung-ho and excited about the blog, got it all set up and haven't even put up anything worth seeing yet! I swear it's coming. It's a good thing I got some pictures taken over the weekend because the forecast in Boston is rain for the next week! I'll get them up tomorrow hopefully. My big sewing project of the moment is organizing all of my fabric for my big move! I'm sort of afraid of what my boyfriend will think when he sees how much fabric I REALLY own! :) I have a hard time thinking about leaving some stuff behind, but let's be honest, a lot of it is just junky stuff I got on sale at Jo-ann's back when I worked there and hadn't yet discovered the MAJOR difference between cheap and nice fabrics. I received an order I placed on fabric.com and was a little surprised at how the colors look in person. That's what I get for being a sucker for those sales! It's like if they offer free shipping, then it's like the same as going to the store, minus actually having to get off my butt and go. But there is something soooo different about going to the shop and feeling the fabrics and seeing the colors next to each other. It's really my favorite part, so I think I ought to get away from this online stuff. Yeah right! Maybe I'll just do both. So much for saving up my money... Recession? What?

Waiting for the sun to come out

Hello! So this is my first post on this blog. I started another blog on a different site, but am finding blogspot a little easier to handle. I'm eager to post pictures of quilts I have recently made and some projects I currently have going on, but using a flash indoors at night doesn't quite capture the colors in the right way. Anyway, I'm really excited to be blogging, especially since the highlight of my day is checking out updates on all the blogs that I follow. I can't say that I'll be able to update quite so often as others, but I hope this will help me be motivated to finish up some unfinished projects and share some ideas with others too.