Goodbye, Froggy Playground!

I am always happy to finish a quilt, but sad that it also represents a goodbye for us.

I finished my QAYG Goodbye Quilt for our friends who are leaving us and going back home to Germany this summer.  Their son is a week younger than our daughter, and since they first met, almost 3 years ago, they have been like siblings.  They have an amazing attachment to each other- when we left town for a few weeks this winter, he refused to leave the house because he knew his best friend wouldn't be at the playground.  They will both likely move on to new friends and new environments, but we will sorely miss the special bond these two toddlers share.  We will also miss his parents, who are both good friends of ours.  We hope they settle into their new Hamburg home comfortably and happily, and that we will see them soon!

This quilt is a new design for me (as most are, since I am a new quilter).  As I mentioned previously, Maureen Cracknell has a wonderful tutorial for this Quilt-as-you-Go project, and she held my hand just enough for me to finish it!

As I mentioned in my last post, my Singer is misbehaving, and so I am using my backup Brother, which is not much of a help in the FMQ department.  Fortunately, this pattern only requires straight stitches, and with my new walking foot, everything went smoothly.

We had a little going away party for them at the playground last weekend, and I arrived early to do a photo shoot before they arrived.  As you can see, the quilt is a little wrinkled as it was folded up in a gift bag...sorry about that :)

 Here's my little one peeking over to help.  This fabric is made from scraps I had left over from my Deco Supernova Quilt, which I made using Lee's Freshly Pieced tutorial.

Actually, Stephanie over at Late Night Quilter is doing a Supernova Friendship Block Swap, so the Supernova lives on!  I added a couple new fabrics, including a very cool Japanese Koi fish print, as well as a NYC-themed fabric with street names and boroughs on it (so they can remember their time here).

Hooray for scraps!!!  It's so nice to just have to add a few strips here and there to put together a quilt top!

Since both the quilt recipients are doctors, I thought it was the perfect occasion to use this fabric, which has kids dressed up as doctors and nurses.

Binding is scrappy and hand-sewn, using extra fabric strips from the same materials.  The best part of this binding was that I finally found a way of joining the two ends of the binding without having a little bump it the binding. Until now, I had been joining the ends with a 90 degree angle cut, which left a little bump in the binding when finished- something I never liked.  Using this simple tutorial from Sew Mama Sew, I joined the ends using a 45 degree angle cut and stitch.  I'm sure many of you already know this trick, but STEP 10 was a revelation for me, and makes that bump disappear- thanks Kristin and Beth!!!
 

Haha!  I didn't take a picture of that sweet seam, but I did happen to snap a camera pic of the binding before I attached it.  Not much to look at, I guess, but there it is.

It was convenient to take these pictures across the street from our apartment, but it was also a great spot because our kiddos shared so many great play times here, at what we call the "Froggy Playground".

There's the "froggy", which is a sprinkler in the summertime, and a fun place to climb year round.  Our kids had many hours of fun on and around the froggy over the years.

Lots of sliding on this slide...

Froggy keeping warm.  Thanks for visiting :)

Progress on a Goodbye! quilt

 This month I am putting together a QAYG Herringbone quilt.  I am using the tutorial from Maureen Cracknell's site: Maureen Cracknell Handmade.  Since I am still having some trouble with my straight stitching Singer, I can't free motion quilt right now, so decided to try my first Quilt-As-You-Go project!

This project involves making 6.5"x 64" panels out of batting, then sewing fabric strips directly to the batting.  Then all you have to do is sew the panels together and attach the backing on with a few straight line stitches and you're done (after binding, of course)!

The picture shows the 8 completed panels.  At this moment, I was "auditioning" the placement of each panel.  I often use my camera or camera phone to take a quick pic to get a "birds-eye view" of my work.  Sometimes seeing it in a photo can help me more easily see balance of color and pattern.  I intentionally made a purple "arrow" in the lower right middle of the quilt.  It's a Japanese fabric which I love, and wanted to create a little focal point out of the chaos.  The quilt top is now complete, and I am just waiting for the walking foot I ordered for my temporary machine to arrive so I can finish up the back.

A few of you might recognize the fabrics in this quilt from a previous project.  I had a huge stash of leftovers from my Deco Supernova quilt from a while back.  Such a fun project- I really loved putting that one together!

I added a couple of new flavors to supplement.  I also altered Maureen's tutorial slightly to allow for my 3" strips (I obviously didn't want to trim 1/2" off every strip!).  Since this is a Goodbye quilt for our friends who are leaving NYC to return home to Germany, I included a couple of strips of NYC fabric.

I have a couple of other cute fabric additions I will share when I'm done.  Hopefully I can show you the finished product soon!