the Color of Summer

When I think of summer, I think of these colors....

Here's to a hexagon-sewing, little people-playin', garage sale-in' SUMMER! xo, Ariel

Modern Improv Quilt

Okey dokey! My first-ever "improv" quilt is pieced and ready to sandwich! MAAAAAN, this quilt should have been faster, but I took a break from it for awhile to get some other things done (like, morning sickness and laying around...) :)

I used Kona solids with Anna Maria Horner's "Good Folks" line (adriatic colorway). It's sashed in my favorite Robert Kauffman white...so soft.

I'm at a loss on the best way to quilt it...should I stipple again? Should I do some sort of grid? What do you think???

OH! And my good friend, Kerri is featuring some of my new illustrations on her blog today...check it out HERE.

Mother's Day

I'm all bummed because I should be getting a 3D ultrasound right now, but the ultrasound tech called in sick today....the earliest they can get me in is next week. I was so excited to see baby's chubba cheeks today :)

So, I'll blog about Mother's Day and fill you in on the fun here. I hope you had a marvelous Mother's Day...if you're not a mother, hopefully you were able to have a moment to honor your mommy, even if she's gone.

I'm terrible about remembering gifts until the last minute, but this year, I got a head start :)

Exhibit A: the dusty Kitchen Aid stand mixer that always has to be cleaned BEFORE you can use it because the bowl collects dust and splatters from the everyday.

Exhibit B: The ingenious mixer cover that allows you to clean your mixer once and not again until after you use it again....(I'm not the ingenious one to invent it, of course, but I will try to get a tutorial up for you soon...) I ended up making one for my mother-in-law and for my two sisters-in-law that visited this weekend.

And, this purty stack came from my hubby, who said, "I was going to just let you pick something out for Mother's Day..." Sounds good to me ;)

Orange and Aqua Spiderweb Quilt - FINISHED!

Woo Hoo! Woot woot! Remember all the pictures of blocks as I planned this spiderweb quilt? It's finally finished! The spiderweb block was my block for the Sew Kid at Heart Quilting Bee on Flickr. At first, when there were no plans for a new baby, I thought I'd just make this a lap quilt for myself and the couch, but I'm so excited to plan the nursery around it now that we're expecting...

I love the look of a soft, crinkly quilt, but decided that stippling this one would not highlight the beauty of the octagons. I decided to go with 1/4" straight lines on each side of the blocks' seams and it made for a very geometrical look.

It's backed in my favorite Katie Jump Rope print by Denyse Schmidt...the basket weave in blue/aqua. Her KJR line is so very soft, so this was perfect for a baby.

Thanks to all the flickr friends who participated in this quilt by sending their finished blocks! I love that if you look really closely, you can see the Heather Ross gnomes that Kerri added, as well as the bits of fabric others added as well. I will cherish this quilt for years and years!

Wanna peek at something else that is way cooler than my quilt? My hubs is an engineer by day and wood-worker by night. He's been busy designing and building Titus' "big boy bed". Here is his progress. He has both the headboard and foot board built and has the side railings and removable toddler rails (for our extreme "roller" boy) in the works. In the words of Titus, "Daddy, you're the man...."