From K - Birds, Bees and a Baby Boy

Well it's official up here in Canada, summer is on the way out, and fall is upon us. Last Saturday marked the very first day of fall, with the autumnal solstice - sorry is the science nerd in me showing?

There is nothing quite like cool nights, crisp air, and turning leaves to makes this city girl domesticated. As it turns out this is an especially useful time for me to be motivated, since I'll be making a road trip to my home town in less than a month.

In the midst of visiting lots of friends and family back home, I'll also be visiting a few new babies. One of my sweetest highschool friends recently had her second baby boy and I thought this was a perfect time to sew up a quilt using my Tula Pink Birds and Bees charm packs.

I love how Tula's lines always incorporate a wide range of colours stories, and I couldn't help but be drawn to the blues, greens, mustards, and rich purples in the B&B prints for this baby boy quilt.

Along with the bold colour scheme, I especially love each of the print designs in this line, and wanted to make sure I was able to show them off adequately. I decided to maximize the prints by using Cluck Cluck Sew's Inside Out quilt pattern.

This is the first Cluck Cluck Sew pattern that I have sewn and I was extremely impressed with how well written it was. Not only were the directions simple, but I was surprised by how quickly this quilt top came together. Before I had even finished this quilt top I went online and ordered a copy of their Pow-Wow quilt pattern. 

Yesterday I used the back of my new design wall to spray and pin baste this quilt, and I was thrilled with how useful it was. You might remember back in my design wall reveal that my husband cleaverly added white laminate to the back of both design boards so I could use them to baste on. Not only did the pins slide in smoothly, but my hardwood floors didn't suffer a single scratch!

I'm planning to quilt this puppy up in the next few days and will be back friday to show you the finished quilt.

From K - Craft Room Reveal (Part 3 - Design Wall)

Welcome back to the third and final episode of my mini craft room reveal. The last and final wall of my craft room is the wall that has me most excited... why you ask? because it's a ginormous design wall of course (emphasis on gi-nor-mous)!

When you first walk into our new craft / sewing space, this is your typical first glimpse of the room:

You'll notice that two of the walls are pretty bland, and pretty white... but that's all to ensure that the main feature of the room is always ever changing, and consistently remains the main feature. Right now that wall is looking a little something like this:

Look progress on my first of two Ghanian wax print quilts! But I digress... so back to the topic at hand.

This design wall has been a work in progress for some time now. I am fortunate to have an amazingly handy husband and he took some serious time planning this sucker out to make it just right. It didn't always look like this... actually to be quite frank, it looked a lot like this for some time:

The hubs used a combination of three foam insulation boards, two sheets of white laminate, and some remnant wood to create two portable 6.5' x 4' foot design panels (6.5' x 8' feet when combined). Each design panel is hung using hardware found at a local hardware store, and the panels can be moved about using handles that are attached to the outside edges.

  

Undoubtedly my favorite aspect of this design wall thought is that it's multifunctional! When I hang the board batting side out, I can lay out a project. If I hang the panels laminate side out I can spray baste a quilt, and if I lay the panels out on the ground, I can use the laminate side to pin baste on (saving our hardwood floors from future scratches).

Because our walls are near white right now, the back of my design board doesn't show up prominently, but here is a peek to settle your curiosity:

I count myself truly lucky to have my own sewing space, and a giant design wall is definitely the cherry on top. This wall is going to get some major use!