My First Article of Clothing

So, I ventured away from quilting to make Ani Mei a dress for St. Patrick's Day. We will be spending St. Paddy's Day travelling from Nanchang to Guangzhou, but I'm sure there will be some down time at the infamous White Swan Hotel to give the dress a whirl. Tell me what you think. Oh, be nice, a seamstress I am not. ;)

By the way, I tried the dress on Strummer to make sure it would fit around a little baby belly (don't tell him I told you, lol). I resisted the urge to snap a picture of him in it, but I think Scott may have snapped one on his camera phone.

More ABC Squares

Just a few more squares. Keep in mind, these are shown with seam allowances still present, so some of the stuff around the edges will be gone.

Alphabet Quilt

My new project (that I'm actually making some progress on) is an alphabet quilt. I participated in an alphabet swap in my OHGWQ group (I had H). The fabrics I received during that swap serve as my base for each square. I am gathering other fabrics to represent each letter now. I am trying to get 4-5 things for each letter, though some are much harder than others. Please, if anyone has some xylophone fabric, hook me up! I can't find that anywhere. Anyway, this is what I have so far.

Stockings

Ian has a really great quilted stocking we bought at Pottery Barn Kids a few years ago. I couldn't find any I liked for Ani or Strummer, so I just decided to make them new ones. Strummer's is the electric guitar because he loves playing dad's guitars....we truly named him appropriately. Ani's has fabrics from her Good Wishes Quilt and butterflies appliqued on top. Butterflies symbolize rebirth and they are beautiful, just like Ani Mei.

Ian's Train Quilt

In case you don't know, Ian is obsessed with trains and has been since he could talk. He would come up to me and tell me the train's name, color and number before he was 3. So, I've been collecting various train fabrics for him to make him an all train quilt. He really loves this quilt and sleeps with it every night. Strummer loves it to and has definately inherited Ian's passion for trains. I will have to make him his own train quilt someday. Since I did have so much train fabric, I made one of my fabric swap buddies the exact same quilt for her son. She is still waiting for her Travel Approval to pick up her little angel.

Cuddle Quilts

I decided it was finally time to make Ani Mei something, but still didn't have all 100 of her fabric squares and wishes. So, I opted to make her and Strummer taggy, cuddle quilts. They are small and fun. I loved making these. I used some of the fabrics in Ani's cuddle quilt that will also appear in her Good Wishes quilt. I also used some flannels and another, super soft fabric for some of the squares. I have been sleeping with Ani's since I made it....just a little piece of her I can hold on to until we go pick her up. Strummer's has the blue border, Ani's is pink.

Scott's Quilt

Next, it was Scott's turn for a quilt. I had the idea to make him a black and white quilt. I gathered all the fabric and started laying out the pattern. Then, I decided it could use a few pops of color here and there. I dragged Scott to the fabric store and he picked out all of the colored fabrics for his quilt. This is a picture of him holding it up outside. It's pretty big, but not quite big enough to cover our king size bed.

Strummer's Quilt

Along the road to collecting fabric for Ani's Quilt, I stumbled across a great yahoo group called OHGWQ, which stands for "One Hundred Good Wishes Quilt". It is full of people who are also collecting fabric for their children's good wishes quilts. I joined several, ok, way too many fabric swaps through this group and have been having a blast making quilts with all of the squares. One of the swaps I participated in was a boys fabric swap. I joined this with the intent of making Ian and Strummer both quilts with the material. So far, I have only made Strummer's. I have used some of the fabrics in other fun projects too. Here is Strummer's first quilt.

My Very First Quilt

The whole reason I took an interest in quilting in the first place was I heard about a tradition in the Chinese Adoption Community about making a quilt for your adopted child. The quilt is to me made out of various patches of material sent to you from friends and family along with a good wish for your child's future. I fell in love with the idea and decided I had to learn how to quilt. Now I hadn't sewn more than a few curtains (very poorly I might add), before I took on this project, so I figured I needed some practice.

I went out and bought "Quilting For Dummies" and got started. I figured I would make some practice quilts for my boys while I was collecting the patches from friends and family for Ani's Good Wishes Quilt. The result of my very first quilting attempt is this Thomas the Train quilt for Ian. It is still my most detailed and difficult quilt to date.

Gotta Start Somewhere

I've already posted most of these things on my other blog, but wanted to clear that one up for the adoption. Since most of the stuff I have been making has been for people other than Ani, I thought I would start a new blog just for quilting. So, I will start off by posting the quilts I have already completed, then move onto the stuff I am working on now. Without further ado.....