For one person out there, this post will present a little surprise. I made this patchwork picnic blanket as a gift for my friend Marie Beath. Surprise!! MB loves to picnic and is most deserving of a special blanket for which to do this on. Also, perhaps it would be good for outdoor re-readings of Harry Potter or Twilight novels?

The inspiration for the colours of this blanket came from some amazing ‘ribbon’/shoestring from Mokuba with all lovely shades of purple and grey. In fact, I bought three different colour ways of this awesome stuff and plan to make two more picnic blankets for two other girlfriends. This is a seriously fun gift to make.

The pattern was designed by Reva and features handy built-in pockets, along the ties to roll it all up for transport. I used a sturdy coloured canvas for the backing. In the class, we finish the blanket with embroidery floss ties to hold the two layers together. I opted to go the extra mile and ‘quilted’ on either side of all of the seams. (with variegated thread, of course!)

Lastly, my newly standard label. A tiny bit of patchwork attached to a hand embroidered label. I think I’ve actually turned making the label into a fun activity!

MB – let’s get together soon for a picnic and I’ll bring your blanket!

I’ve been wanting to show you this quilt for a few weeks, but wanted to make sure that it got shipped off to baby Chloe in Vancouver before posting the photos here. This is just the second quilt that I’ve ever finished. Can you believe it? I feel like I’ve got about a dozen quilts in progress and I keep starting more!

This quilt has undergone a quite a few changes since I started it a year and a half ago. When I took the Presto Nine Patch class, I thought the technique was so fun that I should make a queen-sized quilt. I think this is a particular ‘syndrome’ of new quilters. You want to make every quilt a bed-sized quilt. It’s incredible how much the more work, exponentially, it is to make a huge bed sized quilt. I am now quite happy to make large lap-sized quilts. Baby quilts are a breeze in comparison. I had discovered my abandoned quilt blocks and thought I would motivate myself for the Crafty Slacker’s contest that Toronto Craft Alert had, but I didn’t do much more than post about my abandoned project at the time.

Little Chloe was born a few months ago and I was inspired to give her a baby quilt in the colours of my childhood – pink & green. My first bedroom as a child was decorated in homemade decor all coordinating in pink and green. I loved the colour scheme and still have a soft spot for those colours.

I made the nine patch blocks smaller than what we did in class and then framed them with matching strips. I used a Kona solid in soft pink as sashing between the blocks. For the back, I used some scrappy bits. I especially love the green camouflage which contrasts the sweet girlie-ness in a nice way. I was able to put the front and back of the quilt rather quickly. I machine quilted by stitching in the ditch around and in the blocks using a variegated thread.

Then, I stalled when it came to doing a label – for a couple months. I was not too happy with the label I did on my first quilt. I had used embroidery thread and tried to free hand the embroidery, both were mistakes. I finally got up the courage to try doing this new label. I pre-drew the writing on my piece fabric and used the same variegated sewing thread that I had for my quilting lines. I’m happy with how it turned out. Variegated thread makes everything better.

For the binding I was inspired after seeing a scrappy binding the Karen W. was working on at a recent Quilt Sunday. It’s such a cute detail.

Before I packaged it up to mail it to the west coast, I washed and dried it to get the lovely puckered look. It is so satisfying to finish a quilt and then wash it! It is also extremely satisfying to hear that Chloe is enjoying the quilt as both a blanket and play mat and hopefully it will become infused with all her memories of growing up.