Nurture circle quilts finally done!!!

I have finally finished the two quilts for the Nurture circle of Do.Good.Stitches.

I have a couple good reasons for why these are so late. In August I had a baby girl named Abigail Grace. She is a cute distraction that has been sucking up most of my free time and sleep. She is 7 weeks old now and starting to sleep a little better. Fingers crossed!!!

My other daughter Mirabelle turned one in July and has learned to walk and is running a muck.

The other thing that has been taking up my time is this crunchy masterpiece that we bought at the end of July. It needs many things and we are in the process of tearing up the inside.

And we are also finishing up a kitchen remodel in the house we are living in. Here is the awesome back splash we put in. God willing we will get this kitchen done soon. We started it back in 2015 when before Mirabelle was born!!!

In March we did this block by Patch the Giraffe called Picnic Pinwheel. I blogged about it here. I am not sure what about this quilt that caused me such trouble. But it seemed like I hit so many snags on this one. First I cut the backing wrong, so I had to piece it. Not a big snag but annoying to have an extra seam. Then I quilted it and bound it and right before I tossed it in the wash I noticed that there was a HUGE pucker. I tried to smooth it out but it was just too big. So in the end I had to unstitch oh so much of the quilt and quilt it again. Let me tell you that unquilting is much more time consuming than quilting. Especially when  you have the helping hands of a toddler. 

For the backing I used cross stitch in teal by Amanda Jean Nyberg of Crazy Mom Quilts.

For the May quilt I put together a scrap square that I called Hollywood Squares. I blogged about it here. This one was less trouble but I was holding onto it so I could mail both quilts together. 

For the backing I used a combination of solid Kona fabric in a dark teal (glacier) and a complimentary fabric that I dug out deep from my stash.

Both of these quilts are on the way to covered in love, the charity that we quilt for. I am linking up to crazy mom quilts Finish it up Friday,

September Do.GoodStitches Nurture Circle

This month our circle is following this tutorial for Crosscut Blocks. The tutorial can be found here. I started the blocks using the tutorial and cut the background for the first three blocks. As it turned out they didn't mention in the tutorial that you needed to cut the background fabric larger than 9.5 inches to end up with a 9.5 inch block in the end. So my first three were cut too small. However this block has some overages so I was able to save the blocks. I ended up cutting my next three larger and then cutting down the blocks to 8.75" which was the ending size of the smallest blocks. 

After the first step you sew the blocks together and then cut out 12 5.5" blocks. I ended up slicing the 1st stage fabric into 5.5" strips and then cutting 3 squares from each strip. Once you have your 12 blocks then you sew then into 3 10.5" blocks. Here is how my final squares turned out. 

I don't know how I feel about this block. I like a more patterned traditional block. The random improv blocks always make me a little twitchy. I am interested to see this come together.