Giraffes, Babies, Smiling Faces and Birthdays

My goodness!  Tons of things can happen in a short amount of time!

My niece on my hubby's side of the family just announced that she and her husband are expecting their first child in August.  How EXCITING!  When they got married, their ceremony was performed at the Pittsburgh Zoo in front of the Giraffe exhibit.  She LOVES Giraffes, what can I say?!?!

Of course, once I heard the baby news, my brain started twirling with ideas of all the adorable things I can make with Giraffes as the main theme.  She hasn't exactly said she plans to decorate with Giraffes, but oh well....that's what I want to make. hahaha

In my most recent Quiltmaker Magazine, there happens to be a precious pieced quilt with a family of three giraffes as the focal center.  It truly is precious but once I started trying to match my fabric stash with the fabrics and amounts needed for that pattern, unfortunately it quickly become obvious that I really didn't have the right colors and types of fabrics required to make it. 

Never fear, I will just design my own!  Gotta love quilt design software!  EQ7 is so fun to play around with and I'm just as pleased with my results as I am with the adorable quilt in the magazine.

Rather than a family of three giraffes as the focal point, this quilt will spotlight one baby giraffe.  Within the software there was already a quilt block with a giraffe.  Why not enlarge the squares and triangles so that instead of creating a 12" quilt block, we could just "biggie size" the block and create an entire quilt center using one quilt "monster sized block".  Sounds good to me!

The colors in the example below are just something for me to go by as I search through my stash.  I know for a fact that I have at least 4 FQ's (fat quarters) that I purchased during one of my trips home to Tennessee that reminds me of giraffe skin somewhat in deep orange/gold tones.  I plan to find those FQ's and that will be what I use to coordinate other oranges, browns, etc., from my stash to complete what is needed for this quilt top.  Along with needing some pretty blues for the background/sky and some scrappy green selections for the leaves, for the most part I should be able to shop my stash for the majority of what will be needed.  I can't wait to get started.  The design is straight forward enough that I'm sure you can probably make your own pattern based solely on the diagram below, but once I get ready to start and begin piecing the top together, I will share the true pattern with you that will include fabric amounts required, etc.

Prior to my nieces announcement, I had treated myself and ordered a new Baby Quilt pattern book from connectingthreads.com while they were having a sale of 40% off all books.  I've had my eye on this book ever since reading a review on it when it was first released several months ago.  It has 20 unique and fun looking patterns/themes and I was especially intrigued with the fact each pattern was designed to use a handful of FQ's.  FQ's and fabric stashes go together hand and hand so I thought they would be perfect patterns for someone trying to buy as little new fabric as possible this year.  Plus, there are babies popping up everywhere!  My cousin just gave birth six weeks ago, and there are several co-workers of a couple of my daughters who are expecting and the girls have asked me to make some quilts for them to give as gifts.

In my previous blog post, I shared the pillowcase and soft fabric baby book I had made for my cousin's new baby boy and his older brother.  The gifts were mailed the end of last week and arrived in Virginia two days ago!  The gifts were a huge hit.  Just look at the smile on Lane's face.  He really appears to be happy with his new pillowcase!

Baby Levi seems to be as happy as any 6 week old baby would be with his new book and the smile is still on Lane's face for this pose!  I'm SO glad I thought to make him the pillowcase at the last minute!  It's such a good feeling to know you did something right! :) :)

One gift that I had NOT shared on the blog yet was something I was making for my mom's birthday.  I couldn't share it earlier because she follows the blog and would have seen her gift before I could get it mailed to her in Tennessee.  Her birthday was January 8th (same day as Elvis, but not the same year as his birth!).  I was a tad bit late getting it finished and sent to her but it was mailed the end of last week also and she received it earlier this week.

I decided to embroider a fleece jacket for her after the one I made for my granddaughter was such a hit last month.  Mom has been a seamstress her entire life and when I spotted these coordinating, sewing themed embroidery designs, I knew they would be perfect for her.

Here is the back of the jacket.....

And this was embroidered on the front, down the right side of the jacket....

Mom did take a couple of "selfies" of her wearing the jacket and sent them to me but I know she would wring my neck if I shared them on this blog for the world to see!  I'm very proud to say that she loves her jacket and it arrived at the perfect time since there is a huge winter storm hitting their area of Tennessee right now!

On a different subject, I thought you may like to see the progress slowly being made in my dining room.  Dear Hubby finished cutting in the new paint and I am now finally able to start putting the room back together and do some new decorating.  I still need to purchase some new outlet covers, but overall this room is slowly coming together.  I also plan to hang a wall hanging sized quilt to the right of the display hutch.  Hopefully sooner rather than later.  I have the quilt but need to get the correct sized hanger.

Well, I think I've caught you up on most things.  I do have a few more things to share but will wait and do that in the next post.  It's past my bedtime and my eyes are getting very heavy.

Take care and stay warm....especially if you live in an area that will be hit by this winter storm coming up the East coast.

Until next time!