Fabric Tuesday!

Wow, posts two days in a row?! That's almost unheard of! :)

Happy Fabric Tuesday to all my friends from Quiltstory. I love heading over each week to see what others are up to - it is so inspiring!

My big (BIG!) project right now is a quilt for my master bedroom. I saw Ty Pennington's new line and fell head over heals in love with the green and grey. I'm doing the Rain or Shine pattern from Elizabeth over at Oh!Fransson's book. I finished up my first block this weekend and even though it was a lot of work, I'm loving the results! Lining up my center points needs some serious work though... I've never pressed my seams open, but with all the bulk created in the middle with these points I think I'm going to have to.

I wish the colors showed up better in this picture, but trust me when I say they are a wonderful shade of green, not yellow. I decided to use a solid in each block as well to cut down on some of the business. This block has Kona Coal in it. Others will have Kona Cactus and Kona White. the sashing will be in Kona Ash. I can't wait to get more blocks made! Maybe if we get all the snow they're talking about I can be "forcefully" held up at home with my sewing machine :)

Happy quilting, friends!

Catching up

Long time no blog! It doesn't feel like that long ago, but I think I'm also in denial that it is March already. I live in the Midwest and we are gearing up for another big snowstorm this week (and we got 4" last night...) so it feels much more like I should be getting ready for Christmas than getting ready for spring. Although I haven't had much time at the computer, I have had lots of time to get some projects started!

I ordered a great blue, grey and black fat quarter group from Fabric Worm with some of Alexander Henry's Beep! Beep! line in it that came the other day. I couldn't resist making a quick quilt out of it! Here it is up on the board, waiting for the backing fabric to come so I can finish it up!

A few weeks ago I showed you the cross stitch I finished. I got it back from the framers (Michaels) this week and I love it! I had originally planed on just having it up with my winter decorations, but after what it cost to frame it ($130! and it's only 10"x10"!!) I think it has a permanent home on our wall now. :)

Finally, I've had the knitting bug lately and have been spending many of my nights curled up on the couch with my needles clicking away. I have a few things hanging out on needles now, but here is one I actually finished. It is SO cute and now happily tucked away in the hope chest waiting to be used :)

I hope to be back tomorrow for fabric Tuesday. I'm using Ty Pennington's line to make Elizabeth Hartman's Rain or Shine quilt (the picture is from on of my favorite blogs to follow - the plaid scottie) and i am loving it already! It's the first quilt I'm making for my husband and I for our master bed and I am itching to get more of it done. It's quilt the tedious quilt to make, though, so we'll see if I can finish it sooner rather than later! :)

Happy Monday quilting friends!

Love Doesn't Melt

It's fabric Tuesday again! I haven't spent hardly anytime this year quilting because I've been hard at work on this guy. I have a slew of snowmen that are displayed all over our house over the winter season, so when I saw this kit just before Christmas I snatched it right up. I finally finished it last night and am so excited to get it off to the framer tonight!

How cute is this little family?!

It's the perfect size - 10" x 10" - for a seasonal decoration

I took the pictures pre-washing, so excuse the wrinkles. I'll be sure to post more pictures after it's framed!

For once, my timing was perfect, too, and I have new fabric to play with to get me back into quilting. I'm diving into one of these bundles tonight and have lots of ideas swimming around! We'll see how much I can get done by next week :)





*Both images from www.fabricworm.com - one of my favorite online fabric stores!!

Twin Quilts - Fabric Tuesday

I'm a day late for Fabric Tuesday over at Quiltstory this week, but better late than never, right?!

I actually have two quilts to share this week. For those of you that don't know me, I am a nanny to the most amazing twin boys who will be two next week. I am someone who has always wanted to be a mother, so as I'm in this period of waiting for that to happen, I get to be paid to do it for someone else! (If you are ever interested in what life with twins is like, I keep a blog about our day to day life for their parents to read if they are traveling or for family to keep up with all the milestones that happen in the first few years of life. It's mctwinboyz.blogspot.com) Anyway, these boys are such a joy to me and I really love getting to be such a huge part of their lives. For their first birthday last year I decided to make them each a quilt. 

Up first is Aidan's quilt. Aidan is such a silly little boy! He will talk to me all day long and is already starting to know how to make little jokes. At some point during the day he usually says, "Tilly Aidy!" (Silly Aidan) after making a face or putting something somewhere it doesn't belong. Today he was putting his milk cup by his ear. :) Aidan is definitely the more physical boy. He loves to run and jump and throw balls. When he was still a baby he used to try and climb and get into everything, so I started calling him my monkey. Here is Aidan's monkey quilt:

It's a crazy 8 pattern with all kinds of fun monkey prints

It's hard to see, but the back is a big animal scene. The boys recently discovered that if you go under it in a sunny room the sun shines through and you can sit under there and look at all the different animals. It's very cute :)

Aidan and I on his first birthday

Now it is the ever coveted "Bon-key Ban-key" that he needs every night and at nap time. There is nothing better than seeing your work get destroyed from so much loving!

Up next is Patrick's quilt. Patrick is the thinker. He prefers to play by himself when we're at home and could sit and read books all day long. He likes to turn the pages and gets very upset if he opens it up to the title page and I don't read him all the words on the page! He will sit and say "Read! Read! Read!" until he's sure he's not getting gypped. :) When we go places, he is a huge flirt and loves to bat his beautiful blue eyes at all the ladies. I'm not kidding, he will pick out the skinny blonde adult in the classes we take and sit on her lap at song time and look back and smile at her. It's really funny and very cute! Patrick's quilt was born out of the thought that because he is so smart and such a thinker he will go on to do great and wonderful things, like maybe be a rocket scientist!

It's the same crazy 8 pattern as its twin.

Here's P, as we call him, and I on his first birthday.

He loves his blankie, but not quite as much as Aidan. Because he is such an independent kid he doesn't need the objects to attach to as much. He still goes straight for it at nap time and will usually ask me to sing Twinkle Twinkle when he sees the stars on it.  :)

Thank you for checking out my twin quilts! I'll be back with another project I have in the works for the boys second birthday next week!

Happy Fabric Tuesday!

Love Nest Quilt Contest

Welcome to Britter Quilts! I saw the Love Nest Quilt Contest over at Gen X Quilters and thought it would be fun to enter my first original quilt!

I had my sister over one night and had just gotten some of Kate Spain's Fandango fabric in the mail. I showed them to her and she just fell in love with them. It planted quite the little seed in my head for a wonderful Christmas gift, so off to work I went!

This quilt is made with one charm pack and one jelly roll, along with the white sashing fabric. I randomly sewed the jelly rolls along the sides of the charms to get my blocks. From there I added the one inch sashing. At this point, the quilt was looking much like others I had seen on other blogs and websites, so I called in my consultant (my ever willing and wonderful husband) and together we came up with the idea of setting the blocks off from each other. To make it work without doing any math, I cut a block of the white sashing fabric the same size as my colored blocks. Then I cut it in half and sewed the half block to one side of the row of quilt blocks. When I went to line them up, viola! A squared up quilt top! All that was left was to add the turquoise border and it was ready to be quilted.

I free motion quilted this quilt in an all over stippling pattern.

I used one of the blue fabrics from the line as my backing. I also used left over pieces from my jelly roll to add a row of the blues where I pieced the back together. I love doing that because it brings some life to the usually plain back and, hey, I have to sew there anyway so it really doesn't take much more work!

The binding is the striped fabric from the Fandango line. I love love love stripped bindings!

I worked on this quilt for just over two weeks. I spent a lot of hours on it, but I was just so excited to watch it come together that I spent every moment I could working on it. I was really inspired by these fabrics. They were the perfect choice for my sister. She is young and fun and vibrant, but classy, too and I think these fabrics hit all those notes. My hope is that it will be a quilt that she treasures for a long, long time!

(My sister, left, and me, right, on Christmas morning)

Thanks for checking out my quilt and don't forget to head over and check out the others!

Haaaaaaaave you met Kristin?

Okay, I'm veering away from my usual craftiness to introduce you all to a wonderful woman. Kelly over at Kelly's Korner is doing a Show us Your Single Friends link up at her blog today and I couldn't resist the chance to put my amazing sister out there and hope God brings something out of it!

This is Kristin.

Kristin is 23 and lives near Minneapolis, MN. She works as a Certified Medical Assistant at a clinic in downtown and is well known for her compassion and great people skills. She is the kind of person you can feel instantly at ease with. She's funny, sweet and really good at her job. (No, really. I'm a baby and I let her draw my blood once and it didn't hurt and I didn't have a bruise the next day!)

(I'm the bride and she's the one squeezed in next to me)

Kristin is really fun. She and her friends like to host get togethers with crazy themes, like an 80's Prom or a Saloon party where everyone comes dressed up and in character. She took a trip this last year to Ireland with her friend and they had a blast sightseeing and taking in all Ireland had to offer.

While we haven't always gotten along (Hey! We're sisters!) I am so thankful for her place in my life. God knew exactly what he was doing my giving me Kristin as a sister. We have had more nights full of laughter and silliness than I could ever describe. Kristin will make someone an excellent wife someday and I can't wait to see the man God has planned for her. No matter when he enters her life, she will richly bless him and give him a life full of love and laughter. I hope you might be him or know him! :)

Oh, and she has no idea I'm doing this, so Kristin - either I'm sorry, or you're welcome :)

Kitchen Window Quilt

One of my goals for 2011 is to finally make a quilt that will stay in the Ritter household, specifically one for our master bedroom. We have a nice enough bed set at the moment, but my husband and I are both major cover hogs and we have two fur babies who think sleeping in between us is the most comfortable spot. Imagine 30 lbs of dog holding down the center of the covers and two adults fighting over the sides. It's not pretty. What I need to do is make a king size quilt so all can be happy and warm at night. My husband is all for it, and for Christmas even set aside some money for me to make it with. He also gave me Elizabeth Hartman's book that has a beautiful quilt that she calls the Kitchen Window quilt that I'm just in love with and want to make. Sounds like all systems are go, right?

The problem: I can't decide on fabric. Maybe I'm just putting too much pressure on myself, but I've never made a quilt this big and I want it to last us a long, long time. There are so many great fabric lines out there and I just can't pick! I've got it narrowed down to these 5. Your thoughts are welcome. :)

#1: Sunkissed by Sweetwater


Pros: I'm a fanatic about the color green and this green is one of my favorite shades
Cons: Hubs doesn't love the pink/purple color. The patterned fabric might be too small for the pattern

#2 and 3: Charcoal and Kiwi Impressions by Ty Pennington




Pros: LOVE these fabrics! Both the green and the deep coral are beautiful colors and I love them paired with grey. Big, bold patterns. Having a bit of Ty Pennington in my bed.... Who said that?
Cons: Too few fabrics in the collection? I guess it's harder to come up with cons for this one. Maybe that's telling me something

#4: Central Park by Kate Spain

Pros: I'm a big Kate Spain fan. I love the bright, modern colors and the patterns on this line are great. It doesn't force me into a single color palate either, which is nice since I know hubby gets a little tired of green
Cons: Is it too bright and young? Am I going to be 40 and not be in love with it anymore? These colors seem so young and cool to me, will they not match me when I am older and undoubtedly uncool? (Note: not all older people are uncool, I'm just sure I will be :) )

Decisions, decisions. I want to make up my mind soon, so if you have any thoughts please let me know!

Fabric Tuesday!

I'm back for another Fabric Tuesday over at Quiltstory!

I haven't put in much time at my sewing machine the last week or two. I don't know about you, but after the big push to get the holiday quilts and projects done, I just kind of needed a little break from it. Inspiration struck this week, though when I ran across pictures of a spiderweb quilt. I've been seeing people working on these quilts for a while and I just love them, but never felt confident enough to give it a go myself. I found a stack of fat quarters and ran across this tutorial over at Sew, Mama, Sew on the same day, so I figured it was fate telling me to give it a go!

I'm thrilled to say it's not nearly as hard as it looks! This went together pretty quickly after I got the hang of it and I now have three blocks done (but forgot to take a new picture this morning... Shame on me!). I'm totally in love with the crisp white and the fun red. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this quilt, but sometimes it doesn't matter. Making it is just so much fun! :)

Happy Fabric Tuesday! I'll see you all next week, hopefully with lots more done!

Fabric Tuesday - Christmas project photos!

Drum roll please! It's finally time to show you the final two Christmas projects I was working on!

First up is a mug rug for my mom. She loves leaves and red is her favorite color, so it's no surprise what this little mug rug looks like!

I quilted it in a curly-q motion on the side (kind of like wind if you want to go with the theme) and around the big leaf are little tiny leaves courtesy of my sewing machine.

I had a lot of fun making this little guy! Maybe this is the year to try one of those mug rug swaps!

Finally, here is the biggest project I worked on - a quilt for my sister. This quilt is sort of inspired my Elizabeth Hartmann's Mix Tape quilt. I used Kate Spain's Fandango line because it so perfectly captured the hip, young, modern, fresh vibe that is totally my sister. :)

I'm so proud of this quilt! It is a pattern I would definitely make again, and maybe even do a quilt along or tutorial if anyone is interested!

Happy Fabric Tuesday all! I can't wait to see everyone else's Christmas projects!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

I was looking at all the other blogs today and really loved seeing everyone's collections of completed projects. For me at least, it feels like I never got as much done as I wanted to, but to see all the quilts and projects in one place really shows how much was done in just 365 days. This year was a big year for me as a quilter: it was the year that I decided to get serious about quilting and learn all I could to make myself a better quilter. I've gone from barely being able to follow old patterns, to creating my own and there is no turning back! I am hopeful that 2011 will bring more things to learn and more great quilts to show for it. 

I wish you all a safe, happy and healthy 2011 filled with all the things and people you love!

Brittany