A berry good summer

It's no surprise that I love berries. I've already written about them once this summer, in fact. But we've been gobbling them up so much over the past few weeks that I couldn't resist another post.

We try to get most of our berries in the summer from the farmers' market. They tend to be the prettiest and tastiest, plus they're local. See? So pretty.

We've certainly done our fair share of eating berries on their own, but I've also had several occasions for baking lately, and at this time of year, it's hard for me to justify baking something that doesn't have berries in it.

It started with these Summer Berry Custard Bars from Bakers Royale. I made them for two 4th of July parties we attended, and they were a big hit. Kind of a cakier gooey butter cake with berries. Yes, please!

Shortly after that, I made Smitten Kitchen's Blueberry Crumb Bars for brunch. They have fruit in them, so they're a breakfast food, right? They were delicious. So much blueberry goodness.

Then, this past weekend, I whipped up these Blueberry Hand Pies from Completely Delicious. I've made many a pie in my day, but this was my first time making hand pies. They were so good and definitely a better option for taking to parties, like I did, than a big old pie you have to cut up. Besides, summer is all about utensil-less foods.

 B gave his hearty approval.

I felt pretty much the same way. Now, I just need an excuse to make Smitten Kitchen's Strawberry Summer Cake. I made it last year and have been dreaming about it ever since.

WIP Wednesday #39

Howdy, Wednesday. Let's do this thing. 

Completed:
Beckett's baby quilt (aka, the Marine quilt)

It's done! Done! Done! You can read all about the quilt (and see lots more pics) here, but I wanted to be sure it was documented here, too. Because it's done!

In progress:
T-shirt quilt

My friend Katie and I are pushing each other on this one. We've both been wanting to make one for a long time, so we agreed to start on them together this summer. Last Friday, we had a great night of chatting while we cut up and interfaced a million shirts. As you can see, I still have a lot of interfacing to do. I hate interfacing.

Quilt for the St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild's Ohio Star Challenge quilt challenge

This quilt is our "challenge" for the year. It's due in September, so I'm just getting started, but I have an idea of what I want to do, and I pulled this great stack for inspiration. Grays, teals, and lime greens? Looks like me.

Kitchen Window quilt
Now that B's quilt is done, I'm determined to get back to this one and finally finish it. Next step: sashing! 

On the "to do" list: 

Re-covering the downstairs chair

New pillows for the downstairs chairs
Christmas table runner
iPod workout strap
A mug rug for me and one for a gift
Picnic quilt
Ironing board cover
Another divided basket from the Noodlehead pattern 
Reusable snack bags
Living room quilt
Small zipper bag for me
Baby gifts

This week, I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and We Did It Wednesday at Sew Much Ado!

Piling up fabric

Last Saturday was the monthly meeting of the St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild. It marked the guild's third anniversary, so there were several extra giveaways and prizes. It also turned out to be my lucky day, as I won two of them.

The first was a follow-up to the sew-in we had a few weeks ago. The "price" of admission for each sew-in is one modern fat quarter. All of the collected FQs are then given away at the next meeting. Everyone who attended the sew-in had their name in the drawing, and two names were drawn. Each person received 11 FQs!

I love the assortment I got, and it includes some of my favorites, including some Flea Market Fancy, Anne Kelle Remix, and Metro Living Ring Toss. I also love this print from the Comma collection.

The second one was a biggie. At each meeting, there's a raffle for a fabric prize, usually a small FQ set of a hot new line. Because it was our big anniversary meeting, the set was bigger than usual — FQs of the entire Happy Go Lucky collection. I only bought one raffle ticket, but apparently it was the right one!

I'm so excited about this stack. I love the cheery colors and can't wait to figure out what to use them for. I think the banner prints are my favorite.

The navy and gray prints in the set don't make a lot of sense to me with the other colors, but I love them on their own, and I have the perfect idea for using them — and it probably includes those last few pillows I need to make for the downstairs area.

Finally, when I saw this week's Stash Share picture on Pile O' Fabric, I couldn't help but throw in a picture of my own. I love the yellow, pink, and gray color combo. Maybe I'll have to get these into a project soon.

Have you been following the Stash Share posts? They provide some great color combo ideas and give me an excuse to sort through my own stash. I always find something I've forgotten about!

Marine Quilt finished!

Just a few days shy of his 20-month birthday, I finally finished B's nursery quilt, aka the Marine Quilt!

The fabric is mostly from Dan Stiles's Marine collection. It's hard to find now, but I stocked up on it when I was making everything else for B's nursery two years ago (you can see more of the nursery here and here). It seems Stiles is coming out with a follow-up collection in the next few months. It looks like it will include reprints of some of the original prints, along with some new characters (crabs! pirate ships! turtles!). I paired the Marine prints with two Painters Canvas semi-solids from Laura Gunn (in navy and orange).

 

The binding was the result of lots of debate. Ideally, I wanted to use a coordinating solid or light blue dot, but I ran out of the Painters Canvas solids, and I knew I was going to have trouble matching another solid to the myriad colors I'd already used in the quilt.

After asking the opinions of Matt and our nanny, I finally decided to use some Lizzy House Pearl Bracelets in tin man. I was definitely on the fence about the gray, but I think it really worked out well. I like that it doesn't stick out too much, but it still provides a nice border to all of the busyness. And the white pearls help to break up the gray. I also snuck in one little strip of the star print, which I love so much.

I made the "front" first as a simple strip quilt. I love these prints so much, and they're so big and bold that I thought the generously sized strips were the best way to show them off.

 

When it came to the back, I decided to do something a little different. I started off making the small square-in-square blocks but thought using them for the entire back would be too much. So I combined them with a few more strips and some larger rectangle-in-rectangle blocks, which really worked well to showcase the whale prints. I love how all the improv came together in the end, and the "back" is really more the "front" now.

For the quilting, I was originally going to do zig-zags across the entire quilt, but in the end, I decided to switch it up and use a few different patterns. I started with a zig-zag in the middle, then the adjacent strips got some very dense straight-line quilting. The next sections were more zig-zags, and then I alternated between zig-zags and less dense straight-line quilting. I used white thread throughout.

Some of my favorite blocks:

I love how the boxes frame the cute little whales on the back.

B decided to get it on the photo shoot action. I guess it's a good sign that he likes the quilt so much!

For now, the quilt's residing on the back of B's rocker (it's a bit warm for summer), but I'm so happy with how it turned out, and I hope B loves snuggling with it for years.

And just for fun, the photo shoot blooper reel: