My first IQ project!

I had saved the last of the Sweet Menagerie Nine Patch quilts just so I could try my first pantograph on the IntelliQuilter out on it.  If I screwed it up, I wasn’t going to worry about it as I didn’t much care for this last one.  I had the better part of some jelly roll of Christmas fabrics I wanted to use up, and this quilt was it.

 I used lime green thread!  I wish it showed up better in the pictures, but I’m too lazy to pull out the stand and set up the tripod.

This panto was incredibly dense, and took forever to sew out.  I used almost an entire spool of thread! I figured if I could successfully line up something this densely quilted with the new system, I wasn’t going to have any problem with any other pantograph! 

I’ll probably bind this and donate it… it doesn’t have a home and I don’t have a destination planned for it yet, but I will find a good home for it.  The worst part of winter is coming up and it will keep someone in my community warm! 

I learned quite a bit with this one… I’m probably not doing a panto the most efficient way, and whatever I did certainly didn’t match up with either the book I have or the video I watched, but it worked well enough and made sense to me.

All quilted!

I didn’t get much sleep again last night, but I’m not complaining because I got Little Boy Blue all quilted!

I love the way this turned out!  Designing and making toddler/baby quilts is my absolute favorite thing to do when it comes to quilting.  I truly hope this little baby boy gets some comfort from this quilt, and maybe someday it will have the honor of being his “blankie”.

I used a traditional Baptist Fan on this one, and Superior Threads new Omni… I am really, really liking this thread!

Now to get the binding cut, put on and a label made!

I have two bowls of tomatoes I picked, so I’m going to grab my shower, run the tomatoes through the food mill and get some sauce cooking down and I think we’ll have chicken Parmesan tonight.  I rather feel like I’m on vacation today, on top of the 3.25 inches of rain we got yesterday afternoon, it rained another half inch last night so I was able to skip my daily three hour watering regime, woohoo!

Sadly, the storm destroyed two more of our fruit trees.  One broke entirely in half, the other ripped out by the roots. 

Additional borders or not?

I had planned to add three more one inch borders… however with the three that are on now, it just fits on a standard crib size batting.  If I adde the rest, I’ll have to move up to cutting batting off the roll and wasting the excess (or I can piece it with another scrap for later use).

Opinions?  Does it look lost without them or okay as is?  As is, it measures 44 x 55.  With the three additional borders, it would be 50 x 62.

My EQ rendition with the extra borders is in the post below.  Er… make that two posts below.

Oh no!!!!! I just noticed one of my blocks is upside down!  Ack!

Little Boy Blue

Today I’ll be cutting out the fabrics for this quilt.  It’s one I designed yesterday for a local baby boy recently born with some difficulties, now in the Arkansas Children’s hospital.  I’ve dubbed it “Little Boy Blue” and hope to get it pieced this week, quilted and bound shortly after, and delivered!

I love white in baby quilts, but since this little guy has some health issues, I’m sure the quilt will take a beating and so I put less white in it.

Whipped up some bittersweet chocolate custard to make ice cream for my sweetie later today after it cools!

I ordered some espresso powder and coffee extract from KA… coffee ice cream for ME when it gets here, yum! 

Recipe for the chocolate ice cream.