Bundle of Joy

Finished my first QAYG quilt. Dedicating it to Marianne, the queen of QAYG. Calling it 'Bundle of Joy'. Its for a coming-soon-granchild (grand/great niece/nephew in the West?). No, am not yet the grandmomma age, but we have large families in India. At least we used to. My parents' generation typically had anywhere between 4 to 8 siblings and for my grandparents' generation 6 to 12 was the norm. The number reduced to 2-3 by the time my generation was..well, produced. And now, single-child families are more common than not. Still, families are close knit and many a times live together. So its not at all strange to find cousins, neices and nephews and sometimes grandchildren all being born simultaneously! Especially if one comes from a long line of middle-born ancestors. Like me. Results in middle aged folks having 5 year old Uncles/Aunts and a young 39 year ol' like me having 5 year old grandchildren!! Love it :-).


Anyways, here's the finished quilt. The design was inspired by a photo I happened to see for a couple of seconds of somebody's stall at a quilt market while flipping thru pics online. It is not an exact replica but if I knew whose original design it was, I'd thank them from the bottom of my heart. It lent itself very well to the QAYG technique, and the parents-to-be looove it.

Every bundle needs a ribbon and a bow, right?

Quilted with a 3-stitch zig-zag in straight rows, two rows for each colour.

Straight line stitching on the ribbon part :

And here's the back :

Heh heh, the quilting lines on the bow are not perfect I see..

I used the same colour threads for the front and back so the coloured zig-zags  on the back give it a cute baby look:

All bundled with love..

One last look before it goes to its new family..

 Can't wait for the newest addition to the family. I meant my grandchild-to-come :-). And a new quilt, of course :-).

Happy waiting !

Gratitude of another kind

Gratitude is not always for the things one has. It's also good to be thankful for what one doesn't have. Saw a list of 'Things I don't have and don't want' on somebody's blog (I forget whose. But if you are reading this,  then thanks for the nudge) and that set me off on my own list :

Things I'm glad I don't have:
1.Interfering in-laws
2.Talent for sports
3.Apathy
4.Boys
5.Love for cooking
6.Fondness for anything stronger than wine
7.Need to stay out of trouble
8.Supreme patience
9.Mistrust of people
10.Spin n span n sterile home
11.A thong

I suggest everyone make a list of what they don't have, don't want, and are glad about it. Puts life in perspective.

On the quilting front, am trying my hand at some QAYG after some pretty heavy inspiration from MariQuilts of The Quilting Edge. She has a lovely tutorial or two on QAYGs.

Happy list making !

Oh I'm so new to all this !

Blog-hopping seems to be my latest addiction and this is what I came across on Lily's Quilts :

It said - link up, grab a button, blog-hop. Or something to that effect.

The linking-up was easy, grabbing the button, not so much coz I still have no clue how these things work, and, blogland was heaven ! I just looove them quilting blogs out there and I have sooo much to learn. This is India you know, and we do not have a quilting history out here, and my foray into this quilting world is nothing less than an adventure in uncharted territory. Love it !!

Anyways, I understand one needs to make a mosaic (no clue how to do that :-)) to showcase the month's achievements (!). Am gonna try and do that a lil later and get back here and edit this post to include it. If successful.

Off to hop-hop-hop :-)

Edited to add:
1. I figured out the whole button grabbing business
2. I found this made-just-for-me FMQ 2012 challenge AND I grabbed the button. Look, look --->
3. I tried this mosaic of the 3 quilts I made in November (on Picasa) (this was BEFORE I saw the lovely tip given by Leanne. Thank you Leanne, shall try that next month :-)

All in a day's work !

A picture, they say, speaks a thousand words. I give you, lovely people,  four thousand ! :-)

Have a lovely weekend !

Murphy's Quilting Laws

Yes, they exist. Murphy's Laws of Quilting. And you experience quite a variety of them if you are a novice quilter seeking the path of greater quiltdom. Like, for instance, 'If there is a better way of doing something, you will learn of it only when you are already halfway thru your project'. I learnt today (yeah, halfway thru my project) that if I am making snowballs by attaching little square pieces to the corners, I do not, nay, I must not snip off both layers on piecing them (pic on left). Snipping just the small square after a seam allowance and then folding it open leaves the block nicer, firmer and unskewed (pic on right).

Oh well, better late than never I guess.

W.I.P. progresses despite Murphy and his laws:

Bug jars!! With lots of non-bugsy stuff too :-).

Happy weekend !

My progress to Level II

Once upon a time I used to occasionally design and sew clothes for self and kids. And neighbours and friends. Then their neighbours and friends. And friends of neighbours and neighbours of friends. And...well, you get the picture.

Then came a time when I stopping sewing clothes but picked up the scraps instead. Which, of course, I had saved over the years, fabric-hoarder that I am. Picked them up and started sewing them together into scrappy quilts (or at least my version of what I thought were quilts!) purely with the intention of finishing my unintentionally built up stash.  

Ha! Ha! Ha!

As if.

This is what happened yday when I went to buy one piece of fabric....

I realize two things:
1. I should NOT be allowed within a few hundred feet of fresh fabric. I just may end up like this:

(Picture source:Pickledish)

2 .Now that I have begun to BUY and hoard fabric, I am now a LEVEL II Quilter !

Yay!! :-)

Oh, here's my W.I.P.

Can't tell you yet what its going to be :-).

Have a great day y'all !

Heartstrings

What sorta quilt do you make for a friend who is a self-confessed Romantic? Why, a Heart Quilt, of course!

This is my first string quilt; inspiration from here. (The heartstrings quilt project is an online (mostly) group that makes heartstring quilts for charity. Absolutely admirable.) Did think of an alternate name for this quilt -  'The Romantics', what with one pink heart (hers) and one blue (his), and, bits of each others hearts enclosed within theirs, and... and I'm getting all sappy I think, so shall stop describing it and post pics instead:

For the romantically challenged, here's the pink heart (with a wedge of his blue), saying, "you'll always be in my heart"..

..and the blue one saying, "ditto"..

Hope my friend, allergic to any kind of wadding, partial to turquoise blue and fuschia pink, and, a hopeless romantic, will like this as much as I do. Since there was no wadding, quilting lines were kept to the minimum. And since the strings are pieced on a foundation, it is still cozy enough.

This view of the foundation is only for hardcore quilt-ers/lovers :-) :

Lots of love.