Sunday, February 10, 2008

Birthday Quilts

Michael's son and daughter-in-law recently had their first baby, a boy they named Emil. Michael spent several days with them helping out and bonding with the baby, his first grandchild. They live several hours away, so I stayed home and made this quilt.

I don't have a good photo of it, but I cut apart the pages of a cloth book panel, sashed them, and used coordinating fabric for the border. I don't know what to call my relationship to this baby, but Mimi Kirchner recently posted a picture of her lovely Fairy Grandmother doll, and I'm thinking that's what I'll be, the Fairy Grandmother.

Today Allie's boyfriend Roger turned 21, and she said he would like a quilt for his birthday.
I pulled out this top from my UFO closet, gave it an orange backing and some simple straight quilting. It was pretty quick and painless, especially since I used flannel sheeting for the batt, which requires minimal quilting. This was helpful since it's a pretty big quilt, about 85 x 90.

I'm still knitting baby hats and socks for the Afghans for Afghans project, and I figure I'll make as many as I can before the February 29 deadline. However, I saw this wonderful Flickr page of vintage embroidery patterns posted by meggiecat and I had to start some simple outline embroidery blocks.
I'm going to embroider several different bee blocks with black outline stitch and set them in black and white blocks with yellow accents. Now how cool is that?

7 comments:

Debra Dixon said...

Relationship "names" are tricky sometimes. Brent had a little trouble addressing letters to me and Wes. I finally told him it's OK to write "Dear Mom and Wes". He calls Wes, Wes but couldn't figure out how to write it out. I wonder what we will do when and if grandkids arrive.

Cute bee embroidery!

Rian said...

That is very cool.

We are Grandma Rian and Grandpa Jim, even though Jim contributed nothing to the gene pool. I guess it's conceivable for a kid to have four sets of grandparents these days.

How nice of you to give a quilt to the boyfriend. Even a UFO. That's quite a gift.

Jo Raines said...

Congrats on the baby--I'm sure he will be like your's in no times. Babies sell themselves I always say. And what a precious baby quilt. And you were fortunate to have a string quilt handy when you needed it for the 'birthday boy'!

allie aller said...

These birthday quilts are so special, Barbara.
The baby quilt has so much intelligence in it...like Susan Else's did that I posted. Not your bunnies and flowers, exactly!
And the string quilt is SUCH a treasure. Love your batting choice too. You done good.

Deb Hardman said...

My spouse is the "step" in our family, but to the grandkids he's Poppy. My daughter came up with the title when she met his Dad, & he inherited it, when grandbabies started coming along.

The quilts are wonderful. What a unique idea to take a cloth book apart!What a nice MIL you will make. I never made a quilt for a boyfriend.

The bee emb. is cute too. I love bees. My name means 'the bee'.

Thanks for the Mimi link. I loved it, & for your comment on my snow follies!

Granny Fran said...

Fairy Grandmother is a great thing to be called! Love that precious baby quilt; also the string quilt and the cute bee embroidery.

Nettie said...

Very cool, the bees. My ex-husband is named Curiel and it's still my name according to American Express. He lives in SF.

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