Ch-Ch-Changes

Cue the David Bowie tune...

Many changes have occurred in the last month for myself. I started a new job, which I LOVE! I chopped ALL my hair off, well like 13 inches, which I LOVE. I donated to Pantene Beautiful Lenghts, this was my second time donating hair.

I have re-decorated our office/quilting room (much needed!), and bathroom, a change my husband cringed at. "What was wrong with the old shower curtain?" he asked when he got home from his second job. That's right, he has 2 jobs right now and I never see him, another big change for us! He's working to help pay for our trip to Hawaii, we are so excited for this trip! Another change is that we have 2 new computer monitors on our desktop in our office/quilting room. They take up a bunch of space, but allow for Lee to work from home a few days a week, AND I can watch Netflix/movies easier when quilting. :) I plan to start making some baby quilts and small lap quilts to sell on Etsy.

For a friend and old co-worker she has gone through a big change as well, she's a Mommy! I have yet to meet her little man, Gabe. I want to let her settle in at home with her week old kiddo, but his pictures are adorable. Here's his quilt that I had promised to share last month and not gotten around too. Sorry. :)

I call this quilt "Gabe's Tune." Gabe's dad is in a band, so I planned to use some of the Groovy Guitars fabric by Michael Miller that I had in my stash when I first found out they were expecting. Then I got word from the new Mommy that the nursery was going to be a rock-star theme, so it worked out perfectly!

I used some scraps from my stash to go along with the color scheme in the Groovy Guitars I had, then I bought a few fat quarters to add to it: musical notation and some dots/stripes/solids in grey, blues, whites and blacks. 

 The process for making this quilt involved marking off the quilt top with painter's tape on my design wall.

Sorry, this was taken on my cell phone.

Then I laid out strips of fabric in varying lengths and widths at a diagonal within the 36" square space. I added strips of Kona Cotton Medium Grey to the ends and overlapped over the painter's tape quite a bit to account for seams and trimming.

Another cell phone pic :(

To trim and square up the top I used the painter's tape again on the kitchen floor where I baste my quilts, sorry I don't have a picture of this process. Laying the tape on the floor as I cut helped me visualize the quilt top before cutting so I didn't make any mistakes. Usually I make mistakes cutting so this process helped a lot! I guess what I learned from this quilt was how important taking your time is, and double checking before your cuts really does pay off!

For the back I used a light blue Kona Cotton, not sure of the color, which I also used for the binding. I love pieced together backs, but with baby quilts it is so much easier to use one piece of fabric, and saves so much time.For the quilting a stippled it. This quilt was really fast to put together, probably because I used so my strips from my stash.

I love the way it turned out with it's scrappy strips and off center diagonal lines. Gabe's parents loved to too which made my day since they're not the quilt type. I look forward to stopping by sometime soon and meeting the little guy. Also, to meeting another set of friends' new baby set to arrive this month. Her quilt top is being pieced together right now.