Winners of the Kids Book

Happy Monday!  I hope you all had a good weekend.  We had beautiful weather this weekend (after three weekends of rain), so I took full advantage by enjoying a few Minnesota sunsets up on the deck.  As you can see, it was beautiful!

It’s time to announce the winners of the new book – drawn randomly from the last two posts. 

The winner from Part 1 is: Nicole J, who commented on 5-5-12 at 3:36 pm.

The winner from Part 2 is:  Linda Tenhage, who commented on 5-8-12 at 8:08 pm.

Please e-mail your shipping address to me at hmulder@wecnet.com and I will get your copy out right away.  Thanks to everyone who participated!

For those of you who didn’t win, many of you have asked when the book is available.  It is available now.  International Quilt Market is this weekend and that is usually when we market it to many of the quilt shops.  Unfortunately, we won’t be at market this spring, because of our coming baby.  To be  honest, I am just too nervous to travel that far with only a few weeks until my due date.  Our distributors will be there showing the book, so you can ask your local quilt shops to order the book from them at market (or call us directly to order.)

Those beautiful sunsets that I mentioned earlier allowed me to work on (and finish up) a few knitting projects.  I have a couple more sweaters ready for the new baby.  I made the first one for his three-month pictures – It’s called the “Gramps Cardigan” by Kate Oates.

I love this pattern and will probably do it up in multiple sizes, as I have time.  It’s done in a soft blue yarn called Vintage by Berroco.  It took less than two skeins, so I might have enough leftover to do a matching hat.

The back  – 

You can find my Ravelry link here.

 

The next one I finished up is hardly blog worthy because it is so simple, but I was just using up leftover yarn.  I made my first sweater for myself about 7 years ago out of this yarn, and had been hanging onto the leftover skeins ever since.

The pattern is called the Easy Raglan Sweater from the “Baby Knits Book” by Debbie Bliss.  The book is full of really cute projects for babies, including several that will probably be worn by my little boy!

I added the stripes to the pattern, in hopes that I could draw in a few more colors to coordinate with a matching hat.  I made the puppy hat below for my nephew Zachary, using the two brown yarns in the sweater.  I hope to make another puppy hat with my leftovers, to complete the “dorky hand-made” look 😉

I learned a valuable lesson adding those stripes – I should have added them above where I divided for the sleeves.  By adding them below the sleeves, I had about 24 tails to weave in.  Yuck!  (and super bulky under those arms).  If I had done the stripe above the division, I would have had only 6 tails to weave in.  It’s one of those lessons you learn when you change the pattern!  (or have no foresight)

You can’t really see it in the photos, but trust me,  it’s a total mess from the inside!  Lesson learned…..

You can find my Ravelry link here.

I’m off to go hang out by the curb and wait for the UPS man.  My new fabric is supposed to show up any day now and I am (im)patiently waiting!

 

Preview of Little Quilts 4 Little Kids – Part 2

Time for the rest of the preview on the new book!

For those of you who missed the first part, you can click here to see the boy quilts from the book.

Let’s start off the girl quilts with “Baby Blossoms”.  This quilt is made with a charm pack of Sophie by Chez Moi and some yardage of the brown, blue and red.

The design features easy techniques for making the dresden-type flowers (requiring no templates) and the hexagonal sashing.

The second quilt is the girl option for the “Oh Baby” pattern.  (You already saw the boy version, which was photographed with my nephew Zach and the Ten Little Things fabrics).   The girl version features the addition of some ric rac with the name, and two fabric options.

The Kara quilt features a charm pack of Taza, along with some yardage of the gray.

The Addilyn version is perfect for fat quarters, as the pieces are kept large.  It’s a good way to show off some larger-scale prints, which is something I am often looking for in a pattern.

Ring Toss is another one that I have already shown with the boy quilts.

Here is the close-up of the girl version – Done up in Whimsy (the line that Mom and I did together last summer).

Next up is “Baby Cakes”. 

 This photo features Aubrey, my husband’s niece’s daughter.  She was a perfect little “prop” for the book – she smiled and posed perfectly and we had the shot in less than five seconds.  She even helped pick out her dress and shoes, pointing out that the polka dots on the shoes matched her dress  –  and the quilt too, I might add.  (We also tried to have her little brother in the book.  He was going to be on the cover, but that shot is going to make it into a future bloopers blog post instead.  More to come on that later . . )

This quilt features three different fabrics lines from Bonnie and Camille.  I couldn’t decide which one to use, so I used Ruby, Bliss and their newest collection, Vintage Modern.  The pattern is Charm pack or Layer Cake friendly.

This quilt is called “Cutie Pie” and was made for my niece Abi.

Our nieces Abi and Kara weren’t able to be in the book with their quilts, as they live 3 1/2 hours away.  I am going to show them off a bit anyways!  Here they are all dressed up last weekend at a family wedding.  So sweet . . .

Just a couple quick notes about the quilt – The quilt features 2 1/2″ strips, along with a few scraps for the applique.  It’s perfect for gifts as it goes together really quickly.  You could even make it using the popular quilt-as-you-go technique.  The fabrics shown are from the Simply Sweet line by my fellow Henry Glass designer Barbara Jones.

I had hoped to get a boy version of this quilt done in time to be included in the book, but that didn’t quite happen.  Can’t you just image the fishy appliques from the cover quilt instead of flowers?   Or the car applique from “Racetrack”?

Last up is my favorite of the girls quilt.  I am loving all the cute owls on everything lately, so I had to include an owl quilt in the book.  My niece Addi is the cute little model in the photo.

Here’s a close-up of the quilting and the fabric.  The fabric is Summer Song by Mind’s Eye for Riley Blake.

Even though this quilt looks so girly – it can easily be made for a boy too.  My Mom is in the process of making the boy version below.  Just by changing up the fabrics and leaving the flower out of the owl’s “hair”, it totally looks boyish!

That’s it for the rest of the quilts.  I hope you enjoyed the preview!  The book was delivered here last Wednesday and is arriving in quilt shops now.

I will again leave the comments open for you to have a chance to enter to win a free copy of the book.  I will name the winners from this and the last post in my next blog entry.  Again, I am curious to see which of the designs you like best!

Preview of Little Quilts 4 Little Kids – Part 1

It’s that time of year again – Time to share what’s in the new book that I have been working on over the last 5 months or so.  I have been busy exploring a new territory – fun quilts for babies and little kids!  I shared a bit about my creative struggles  earlier this year, so a new subject matter was just what I needed to bring back a little of my quilting mojo. . .   It was really fun to work with fun kids fabrics, bright colors, and whimsical applique shapes.

I had several goals in mind with this book:

1.  Provide a range of styles from traditional to modern (though leaning a little bit more toward the modern).  I wanted motifs and colors schemes that would fit into any decor – and little kids rooms can be so fun!

2.  Provide a range of projects for many skill levels and time commitments.  Some of the projects are good for quick gifts and some of the projects have extra details for that really special little one.

3.  Most of all, I wanted designs that would grow with the baby – I was thinking from newborn up to kindergarten.  So, there are no rattles or ducks, no super soft baby colors, but things that kids will like right away and when they are 3, 4 and 5.

 

Now, onto the quilts . . . .

Because there are so many pictures to share, I am going to break this into two posts. First up, I am going to show the boy quilts (Stop back soon to see the post on the girl quilts.)

Here is the cover of the book again:

This quilt is called “Here Fishy, Fishy”.

I knew I had to have a fishy quilt in the book.  You may remember that my husband is a fishing fanatic.  He takes it the extra mile by talking about fishing in his sleep.  My favorite thing he has said in his sleep is – you guessed it – “Here Fishy, Fishy”.

That little saying was my inspiration for this quilt –  Along with my love of chevrons and anything with googly eyes.

 

My next quilt was inspired by all my little nephews who love cars.  They can turn anything into a road – so why not make them a quilt with a built-in road?

My nephew Ethan is testing the road for the photo shoot.  It actually kept him entertained for quite a while!

The pattern is called “Race Track”  and the fabric is Fox Trails by Riley Blake.

 

The next quilt is called “Oh Baby” and features my brother’s youngest –  Zachary (aka – “The Tornado”).  I really wanted to have kids in the photos of my book.  Joel thought I was crazy for wanting to attempt that because it is hard enough to get a good photo of a quilt, with all the lighting and settings just right.  Then add a kid to the mix and the challenges multiply!  I was really glad we tried, cause look how cuuuute this little tornado is!

This quilt features the kids name (obviously) and uses a charm pack.  There are also some girl options for this pattern that I will show in my next post.  The boy fabric shown is Ten Little Things by Jenn Ski for Moda fabrics.  I just love the owl fabric in the border!

 

Next up is Puppy Love, featuring Ethan’s little brother Abram.  He is about 4 months old in this picture and he came up with this pose all on his own!

This quilt was inspired by my Mom because she came up with the original design for this quilt.  She makes a quilt for each grand baby born in the family and this one was made for my brother’s middle boy Peyton.  Here is her version:

She used all flannels, so the quilt is super soft and snuggly.  For the book, I used a more current fabric line called Reunion by Sweetwater for Moda fabrics.

I tell ya, being a model is tough work!  I just wanted to show off my nephew again – and give you a close-up of the puppy details.  If only real dogs came with polka dot ears!

 

Next up is Building Blocks, modeled by my nephew Peyton.  As you can tell, he shares a room with his big brother and they are into dinosaurs.

When I saw this dinosaur print, I knew I needed to have it!  This quilt was designed with that concept in mind – when you find a perfect print that you just don’t want to cut up too much.  Then add a few 10″ squares or fat quarters in assorted colors, and you have this modern boy quilt.

Last up for the boys is “Ring Toss” (girl option shown also).  As you can see, I have run out of nephews to use for props . . . .

The quilt is quick and modern.  It features Layer Cakes or 10″ squares.  By the way, many of the quilts in the book use precuts.   When I started shopping for kid fabrics, I quickly realized that precuts are the way to buy fabric for these little quilts.  Otherwise you end up buying yardage or a fat quarter pack, and having enough left-overs for a full size quilt!

Here’s is a close-up of the boy version.  The featured fabric is called Summertime by Barbara Jones for Henry Glass.  I added a few additional prints from my stash, along with the solid grey background.

So  –  That is half of the quilts from the book.  I will show the others as soon as I have the post ready.

In the meantime, you can leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of the book.  If you are trying to think of something to comment on, I am always curious to see which design is your favorite.  As a designer, it is fun to know what types of things people are attracted to.  You can also comment on your favorite boy fabric lines, or anything else fun that comes to mind!

 

To read part two of the preview, click here.