Any time now . . .

Five or six years ago I was at my Grandma Matheson's home and she was going through her fabric for some reason. Anyway, she had this piece that had all these cute animals playing instruments that I told her I loved and she told me to take it. Since then I have wanted to make a baby quilt with it, but couldn't figure out how to make it look girly for Alexis so it continued to sit in my quilt fabric waiting for the day it could be a quilt. Once we found out we were having a boy I knew I what fabric I was going to use. The one problem, I have used the same pattern for all the other kids baby quilts

Karissa's, Alexis', & Andrew's baby quilts

and I couldn't figure out a cute way to make this fabric work, expecially since I needed 9" blocks to accomodate the larger animals. So my mom and I came up with a new pattern.

The goal, to finish the quilt before the baby came. I had yet to do this (Alexis was over a year before she got hers) and I was determined. And as luck would have it I finished.

Aren't the animals cute??

So now the baby can come any time and my list is complete. I am being induced on Monday (22nd), but maybe the baby could come tonight???? (Not that I'm holding my breath)

Quilt, Quilts, & More Quilts

Alexis moved into Karissa's room downstairs last Christmas. Prior to that she was having a "sleepover" in her room every weekend. With the move I thought it was high time I got them new quilts for their beds. So I picked out a 16 patch that was sashed, with applique flowers on the blank squares. As many of you know my Mother-in-law is amazing at applique and since I knew it would take me FOREVER to finish the squares I asked her if she would do them, which of course she said she would. So I cut the sashing pieces and the blank squares and gave the squares and remaining scraps to her and told her to have fun. Which she did. And when she returned the squares we not only got the squares back, she decided to do the whole quilt top. She suprised us with the top and told us if we bought the back she would quilt it. Since I never turn down such offers we quickly ran to the store and about 3 weeks later we had a quilt.

Isn't it beautiful!

You have to admire the detail.

I then jokingly (kind of) told her that she would have to do one for Alexis which she promptly agreed and told me she already had all the fabric and would use a little of mine so the quilts, although a little different, had some similar fabrics. Once again, all I had to do was supply the back. So yesterday we went down to the house for General Conference and Alexis got her quilt for her birthday.

Once again, more beautiful than I could possibly imagine.

And the flowers are so adorable!

Needless to say, the girls are in love with their new quilts and I love my Mother-in-Law even more. One added detail that isn't as easy to see in the large quilt pictures is that she put their initial on their quilts, which is the first photo in the post. So now all the kids have new bedspreads (if you didn't see Andrew's you can check it out here), and that is officially completly off my list, for a few years at least. Now to start on the baby's quilt.

Rockets Away as you sleep

So 3 1/2 years ago we moved into our house, and Andrew moved into his own bed. Since then I have been planning on making him a quilt. First I was going to make a "Transportation" quilt with "paper pieced" boats, planes, cars, trucks, etc. Well, that went really slow and I just never got more than a few blocks done. Then when Andrew started his rocket craze I realized this was not something he would grow out of, which is just fine, and I should do a rocket quilt because that is what he really wants. When I was designing the quilt I had to figure out which rocket to use and decided on the "Cosmic Cobra" which met a very sad ending last summer -- for the second time.

Could a rocket land any better -- or worse?

The rocket was really quite neat, What it was suppose to do was to pop the nosecone off and then it fell by a helicopter mechanism and the body tube (yellow part) came down with a parachute. The first time the top came down right but the body tube crashed. The second time we just had impact and it was decided that the Eames' household no longer flew cosmic cobras. But now Andrew can enjoy it on his bed.

Close up -- the fire ended up a little wonky, but I will just have to do better when I make another one for the baby when he is old enough.

In case you are wondering, the long points on the stars and the wing angles (4"x6" half-square rectangles) were the hardest. Thank you the internet (star points) and paper piecing (wings).