The wonky one

Update! 

I found a beautiful art quilt and decided to do a thing sort of like it. So here it is, all seams are intentionally crooked a bit.

Quilting pattern or child's doodle?

What kind of question is that? Obviously it's a free motion pattern!!! Flowers and stars with swirly centers. :) How could you ask, L?

Foxes and Birch Trees

 Here are the first four blocks (now eight!!!). So many pieces but so very cute!

I still need to trim the block. Does anyone happen to remember where I put my 8 inch ruler Saturday? It is somewhere convenient to grab and do these blocks. Tomorrow I'll intersperse foxes in the birches.

And it's basically done; on its way to Sweden. The girls can finish the border. Here it is!

Gnome Tree Skirt

And the stars and swirls quilting.

Ham and Eggs

Last year, while searching for the perfect finishing fabric for a baby quilt at Country Carriage Quilts, the cutest wool applique kit jumped into my arms.

What wouldn't I love about this? Cute pigs and chickens! Even the same color eggs as my hens lay.
And don't you appreciate the puzzled look on the piglet?

Rachel's Of Greenfield Ham and Eggs Quilt Kit makes a 13" x 15" wall hanging. Pigs and chickens share a space surrounded with checkerboards.

After each step, the quilt seemed more destined to live on my kitchen wall. First I made the background, then cut out and appliqued the animals and finally added buttons, embroidery and beads. 

The close-ups below show some in process work --  the lazy daisy and bead grain, the outline and filler quilting. It was a very enjoyable take-along project.

Rainbows and Dinosaurs

Here's a scrappy quilt; a perfect way to use up tons of those squares you cut from scraps in a moment or hour or week of craziness. My grandson and I began this quilt with a dig through those squares. He was three. He'd helped finish the quilt for his bunk. This one would be for his baby brother's bed in a couple years. His mom and I decided to make a could more rows, but arrange them in groups of two just so the two would be a bit different.

Quilting with small children poses its own set of problems and its own opportunities for joyful giggles. Attention span might be shorter and your little one may exhibit the "oh shiny!" syndrome. If your partner in sewing lives on the other side of the world, it can be even more of a challenge.

We began by sorting out colors from the 2 1/2 inch square bin and sending pictures of the target color back and forth via email. Rowan would makes suggestion as to which block should come next and which had to sit next to each other. Over a few weeks, we put together rows for most of the colors in the rainbow. These rows were sewn together and just waiting for me to find a good sash fabric. Turns out it was a good thing that it sat on the shelf a couple months.

The first sign of a problem sailed in with a shipping company's ship.  The companion quilt, also a rainbow quilt arrived in Sweden. It was made of 3 1/2 inch strips...so instead of a mere 27 blocks per row, we now needed 39. Sigh. It's a good thing that my seam ripper and I are buddies. Adding more blocks often meant taking bits and pieces apart to improve balance between prints and shades.

The quilt also needed a bit of  redesign to expand the width. As it was, the sash strips were about the same width as the rainbow strips. It lacked interest visually. After brainstorming, we decided to border each set of blocks with a matching border. That added enough with to use a 2-inch sash.

If I Ran the Circus...

A fabric-inspired baby quilt

and their matching blocks: