May's quilt is done

The baby quilt I previewed a few weeks ago is finally done. Lots and lots of little flying geese units came together and ended up really cute. I took out six flying geese at the bottom and put in a small panel with the baby girl's initials. I put the initials on first, then sewed it into the quilt, and the letters ended up off-center. The addition of a little heart was all it took to fix that.

 

I picked up this wooden rack from a thrift store yesterday. I thought it would be great for draping and photographing quilts, but I wish I knew what it was really meant to do. I thought I saw something like it in Betty and Don's bedroom in a season two episode of Mad Men. I suppose it's for hanging up a suit. Then you can set your hat on top. And I can only assume that the little dish sticking out in the front is for ashing cigarettes, which will come in super handy for me. (Not really.)

The backing was made from the rose fabric that I mentioned a few posts ago.

 

The quilting lines are all horizontal, going above and below the seam lines.

I had plenty of backing fabric left, so I used that and some pink and green terrycloth to make some matching burp cloths. At least...I hope they're burp cloths. I've never made them before, and there's no consensus online whether people actually prefer the contoured, peanut-shaped cloths. These were just straight rectangles. Bundled with the quilt, I've got a nice present for my friend, the expecting mom. Plus, I have enough backing fabric and flying geese units leftover to whip up another baby quilt for another friend who is expecting a girl. Hopefully, I'll have that done in a few days to show here.

After these little baby quilts are done, I might need to take a break from quilts for a little while. Flying geese make me want to run screaming into the night, almost as much as cathedral windows. And then I see how neat the overall effect is, and I start dreaming of making a twin-size quilt with black "sky" and rainbow "geese". So instead of quilting, I plan to spend most of July working on pillowcases for the pillowcase drive at my local quilt shop. That should be easy and mindless, and also use up a lot of stash.

I was also able to pull together a small project last night. I've had a few yards of Michael Miller's "Gnomeville" for a long time now, always meaning to use it in my gnome-themed nursery. Now that the baby is a reality and the nursery is starting to come together, I thought it was time to use it! So I made a valance.

 

The nursery has a lot of greens and browns, and red is just the accent color I needed. I love this cute fabric showing all the gnomes working in their mushroom houses.

That's seven projects from stash. (More or less.)