I finished cutting and piecing the quilt top for my friend’s baby clothes quilt and started quilting. One of the squares really inspired me, so I finished quilting it last night:

Bubbles and waves quilting.

I did simple bubbles and waves to simulate water and the ocean for this shirt and I think it came out really cute. Not sure what I’m going to do with some of the other squares yet!

Linking up:

The Balboa Inn

On January 17, 2009, after months of planning and nearly SIX years of dating, my husband and I arrived at the Balboa Inn in Newport Beach, CA to get married.

Table Numbers.

I made the table numbers, Mike’s aunt Georgia made the centerpieces and arranged the flowers for us.

Centerpieces.

Funny story: my hair and makeup artist bailed on me the day of my wedding, so we had to go to a nearby salon. They were so nice to us, I’ll never forget how wonderful they were.

Getting ready.

My mother in law hated my shoes, but I loved my “something(s) blue!”

My blue flats. I'm ready to party!

My mom putting on my veil.

I LOVED my birdcage veil.

Mike and I decided to take pictures before the ceremony, so here he is “seeing me for the first time.”

I believe he said, 'Oh, wow.'

We went and took pictures on the beach…

That bald head just catches all the sunlight.

And then walked back to get married.

One of my favorite pictures of the day.

My bridesmaids from left to right: good friends Amber and Vanessa and my sister and matron of honor, Teresa.

My father and I.

Getting ready to walk down the aisle.

Mike standing up with his groomsmen, from left to right: Best Man and brother Greg, good friends Jason and Nick.

Taking our vows… we laughed a lot during our ceremony, we were just SO HAPPY! Also, Mike’s grandfather married us.

Clearly we aren't taking this seriously enough.

Our first kiss as a married couple.

You may kiss the bride!

We’re married!

Woo!!

And we lived happily ever after.

There are a LOT more pictures, but I thought I would end it here (we did have a reception!) You can view all of them on my Flickr, or here’s a set of some of my favorites.

These pictures are from last week when I mentioned I needed to babysit my nephew so my Mom could be with Granny during her last hours.

He LOVES playing in this activity chair!

Then he got the hiccups and talked to me for a while…

Enjoy your weekend!

My husband, Mike and me on New Year's Eve. I look kinda weird because I was dressed as Kim Kardashian, but I took off the wig in this picture.

I just went looking for a post on my wedding, and there wasn’t one! I can’t believe I forgot to post about my wedding. Well, here’s a picture of us on our wedding day.

January 17, 2009 in Newport Beach, CA.

As much fun as it was to marry my best friend in front of our family and friends, we had been together so long at that point it kind of felt like we were already married, lol. We purposely chose to get married as close to our original dating anniversary as possible (Jan 20th), since we had been together almost SIX YEARS by the time we got married. So even though we’ve only been married three years… we’ve been together for nine years now. I can’t believe it!

Mike and I on our first date in 2003, our senior year Winter Formal.

I can’t believe how young we look there. Happy anniversary to my best friend, my confidante, my biggest supporter and the love of my life! We are going to dinner tonight to celebrate.

Have a great day!

The cover of the vintage pattern I used

I think I’m doing an OK job so far. I don’t know about you, but the face of that cat/lion is super creepy to me! I changed mine up a bit, I think for the better. Here is the head of the kitty I made:

The head of my kitty sleeping bag.

All I have to do is attach the feet, tail and do some quilting on it. Then I’ll be done! Thank goodness!

The quilt is completed! I’m so happy with the way it turned out. I used the Silly Safari quilt pattern from Debbie Mumm’s Cuddle Quilts book. This is the third quilt I’ve made from this book, they’re all so beautiful. I spent a long, long time agonizing over the fabric choices for this quilt. I LOVED the fabrics used in the sample, but as much as I scoured the internet and local quilting stores, I couldn’t find them. I’m happy with the fabrics I settled on though, and I love the backing fabric. I’m not sure what it’s called though. It was nice to not have to piece the back for once!

I used scraps of fleece fabrics for the manes of the lion and zebra. French knots served as eyes and nostrils on the animals. And as for the quilting, I did mostly straight line quilting and a diamond pattern for the border.

Check out closeups of each of the animal blocks in the gallery.

Linking it up!

JD's Silly Safari Quilt

I still need to finish the quilting on the border and then bind it, but I’m almost there! This pattern is from Debbie Mumm’s Cuddle Quilts book. I spent months agonizing over fabric choices, but I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. I’ll go into more detail on the finished quilt post! I’m planning on giving this to my nephew for Christmas (he’ll be 4 months and change!).

Let me know what you think of this one

Completed Camping Quilt!

The quilt measures approximately 64″x64″ and was made with fabrics designed by Leslie Beck. Check out this post for more information on the fabrics. I plan on giving this quilt to my mom for Christmas! She originally bought all of the fabric to make a quilt that she could sew all of her Girl Scout patches on to. She never got around to it though, so I took it off her hands and made it for her!

The back of the quilt.

I realized once I finished the quilt top that the backing fabric (the camping fabric in the center) that my mom originally bought for the project wasn’t going to be enough, so I ended up having to do a pieced back. It was quite a challenge! I wanted to use the blue fabric from the front of the quilt, but I didn’t have enough. Then I decided to use the green fabric, which is actually perfect since it was fabric my mom used to make herself a Girl Scout uniform back when she first started with my sister. I STILL didn’t have enough fabric, so I used some leftover fussy cut squares and blue fabric I cut for the front. Whew!

The quilt design is the same simple grid design I use on a lot of my quilts. In this case I felt it actually was appropriate; since my Mom is going to be sewing patches to it, I didn’t want her to have a lot of quilting to push the needle through.

The red binding also came from the stash my Mom donated to me earlier this summer. After adding the label and washing it, I finally finished it! I can’t wait for Christmas to come so I can give it to her!

QuiltStory Link Party

Well, it didn’t go as quickly as I had hoped since I got sick in the middle of it. But now it’s finally done! Introducing my latest quilt: Sweet Hearts!

Sweet Hearts completed

The quilt finishes at 46″ by 42.5″ and is machine appliqued and quilted. I wanted to do all over free motion quilting on it, but that’s outside of my abilities for now. So I did a grid pattern for the quilting, with a vine decorative stitch in the purple border. It’s a preset on my sewing machine. I used variegated thread for the quilting, a first for me. I liked how it turned out. I used fabrics from my current fabric stash to complete it (yay!). I really had a fun time making this one, I love all the different hearts.

One of my favorite blocks, I love the background fabric. So cute!

The back of the quilt was made with some pieced flannel fabrics I had in my stash.

The back of the quilt.

I just love these two fabrics, they’re so cute!!

Amazing what you can find in the remnants bin!

Another part of the quilt I love is the label:

Forgive the smudging, protecting baby's identity!

I printed out the text for the label on a piece of paper using cute fonts, and then traced over it on the piece of fabric to make the label. I like how the font matches the hearts on the front. I used some ric rac I had left over from Liliana’s quilt as a border and voila! A very cute label.

One aspect of the quilt I’m not happy with is the binding:

Yellow binding.

I wanted to use the red polka dot fabric, but it’s quite a large print and I didn’t think it would translate well into binding. I also thought since I had a pretty bold print for the outer border, I should use a solid for the border. The only solid I had that I thought would match OK was this yellow I got from my mom’s stash. Lesson learned! Don’t settle!

Overall I’m pretty happy with the way this quilt turned out. I hope Mama and baby love it!

I’m sharing this on some link parties!

QuiltStory Fabric Tuesday

Look at my handsome boy!

We adopted him in February 2010 from a county shelter. We’ve been so happy to have him in our lives. He’s just a wonderful, loving, smart, cuddly dog.

Over the past couple months I’ve been thinking about adding another dog to our family. My brother has been volunteering at The Pet Rescue Center and told me about an adorable dog named Andy. He’s a deaf, albino Spaniel mix of some sort. After thinking it over and talking it over with my husband, I decided to take Jetty out to the PRC to meet this guy. What a cutie! He and Jetty started playing right away and they approved our application.

On the way home from PRC!

I picked him up last Tuesday and he’s been a bundle of energy ever since! He’s about a year old but VERY puppy-ish. He’s not completely deaf but definitely hard of hearing, so we’re working on hand signals to train him. He knows “sit” about 50% of the time. He’s not quite housetrained, but we’re working with him.

So, what you're saying is I'm *not* supposed to poop in the house?

I’m so happy to introduce him to you and welcome him to our family!!