First Two Finishes of 2024

 The first two finishes of the year are for the same recipient. I've got a great-nephew due anytime now. He is my second sister's first grandchild, but unfortunately for all of us, my sister was taken from us too soon and she won't meet him this side of heaven. One of her great regrets was not holding a grandchild, so when I finished making memory quilts for her family from her clothes, I set a few bits of clothing aside. I can't bring her back, and it's a poor facsimile of her holding her grandson, but here's the quilt for him made from her clothes.

It's really soft and drapes like a hug. 

Here's the minky backing where the quilting really shows up. I was thinking of the stair step pattern as a stairway to heaven, and her coming down long enough to hold that grandbaby. Even though I've washed all the clothes, they still smell like her perfume. 

On a lighter side, my nephew wanted a beach theme for the nursery, so I went that direction with my quilt, and the quilt from me is a bit bigger, good for tummy time.

Working with my sister's clothes is heavy on my heart, so I decided to play around with my quilt. I grabbed two light tan fat quarters for the dry sand, two darker golden tan fat quarters for the wet sand, and blues and greens from the lightest to dark. I cut all the fat quarters into 2.5 and 4.5" strips, grabbed my specialty rulers, EZ angle for HST's, Companion Angle for QST's, and Tri-Recs for triangle in a square units. With a colorwash beach scene in mind, I started cutting units for 4" finished blocks. I made more blocks than I needed so I could really play on the design wall once the blocks were made. To up the beachy feel, I also added in some fussy cut 4" finished squares with sea creatures on them. 

In this photo you can see several of the fussy cut animals. I didn't want them super obvious, so I tried to put them in with similar colors. The colors are off in this photo, I should have taken it outside. The first photo shows the colors much more accurately. Several of these fabrics were brought to me by DD#2 when she went to Hawaii last year. 

My quilt for baby has a minky backing too, but I quilted spirals on mine, wanting to add in some wave action. 

I also sent a dozen beach themed burp rags I made. 

I never know how to list the first quilts of the year. Technically I could count them as UFO's since they were not started in this calendar year, but they were never set aside so I'm listing them as WIP's instead of either a UFO or New Start. 

I've got all the blocks done for my colorway of Indigo Way. I knew I was taking a big risk this year, because I was messing with Bonnie's values. I usually do a photo negative of her colors, using the darkest colors where her lightest are, and using my darkest where her lightest are. This year I messed with that, and if I was determined to do her layout, I shouldn't have. 

Here's a sample of the blocks in her layout, and I am not love with it, not even in like with it. I never make myself stick with a designer's suggestion fo layout, so I played around with it, and I did find something I liked. 

Straight set with my purple background for sashing, but these light teal cornerstones, yup, this I can get behind. I'm using the units from the setting triangles to make extra block B's. 

I'm going to try my men's shirt version with the on point layout but with solid setting triangles. I wasn't a fan of the border, and I only made those units in my colorway, because I was pretty sure that step was the border. I'm still debating if I'm going to try to rework the border or just use the units in another quilt. 

I'm almost finished quilting a UFO too, so maybe that will be on the blog finished next week!