Nov
10

5 Little Monkeys

Posted Sunday, November 10th, 2013 in baby quilt, Five Little Monkeys | Read More

I finally get to share a baby quilt that I have been working on this year. This quilt is for my daughter’s baby, due in a few weeks. I worked on it in spurts. I did the small embroidered blocks first, then worked on the blocks with multiple monkeys. Some of the larger blocks each took about three hours to stitch out on my Janome Memory Craft 10001. When I finished two of the large blocks, they were too large for the quilt and had to be redone. I used those blocks to make pillows. The borders were the part that intimidated me. I had never stitched any item that had to be re-hooped and stitched on one long piece of fabric. I did a trial on a piece of muslin to get a feel for how far apart to start stitching the words. It is not perfect but it is finished!

Jennifer helped me pick the fabrics used in the quilt but she did not see the finished quilt until the shower on November 9. She has decorated the nursery with this quilt as the inspiration for the theme.  I can’t wait to see it hanging on the wall!

And here it is….

and the pillows….

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May
16

My next big project…

Posted Thursday, May 16th, 2013 in baby quilt, Five Little Monkeys, Quilting | Read More

On Mother’s Day, my daughter and her hubby announced publicly that they are expecting in December. That means that grandma has to make a quilt! They plan to decorate the nursery with a monkey theme and I have just the quilt pattern for that! In 2008 I saw a cute “Five Little Monkeys” pattern in Quiltmaker’s Quilting and Embroidery magazine. It incorporates the 5 Little Monkeys rhyme in the blocks and border. Last summer I started the embroidery. Some blocks take over an hour to stitch out.

Last week I went to Columbus for a few days and Jennifer and I went fabric shopping for the rest of the quilt fabrics. I am changing the colors a bit, with orange as the predominate color. This is the fabric I bought.

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