Two Special Preemies

It looks like I'm going to have to put Sunflower's quilt on the back burner for a bit while I create two special preemie quilts. There is a distinct possibility that the twins DD is carrying will make their appearance between now and Christmas. In this case, not a happy thought. DD is all of 28 weeks along. It would be so much better for everyone involved if those babies could just stay where they are for another month. At this point every day, every hour, becomes precious. I will gratefully and happily accept any and all prayers on our behalf. And I thank you for the support you've already expressed.

Inbetween phone calls and emails yesterday I managed to get more blocks made for Sunflower's quilt. I don't even know how many I made. I do know that I'm very close to having enough for the bulk of the quilt top.

First we have a quartet of blue blocks. Sunflower was born in Washington State so of course I had to use a patch of this print that commemorates the western side of the state. And it only made sense to surround it with a raindrop print!

There were some other folks who dropped in to keep the fairies company too:

I think the spaceship print and the aliens are actually from two different lines of fabric. The blue is from a fat quarter I just picked up the other day; I had the white in my stash from a sale some months ago. When I remembered the white alien print I couldn't resist trying them out as background patches. ;- )

And four more blocks:

I think that's the third block I've made from a fat quarter of the 1960's psychadelic print. There are scraps enough left for at least one more I bet.

I have a few more blocks in pieces at the sewing machine. I'll probably get them assembled and then turn my attention to the preemie quilts for DD's babies. I never expected to be making preemie quilts for my own children's children.

The Waiting Game

This ought to be interesting. DD called maybe an hour ago to say she was having contractions and needed to go to the hospital. Her babies are not due until at least mid-February. It takes us 45 minutes to get to where she lives. My husband and son left about half an hour ago for the hospital so they can collect the two granddaughters and take them home and put them back to bed if possible. DH has been up since four this morning and now will be up at least half of this night too.

My body won't tolerate DD's house. I can't go and be Grandma for the two older girls. I have to sit by the phone and wait for news. {sigh} This is not fun.

At this point I don't know how long DD will be in the hospital. I'm counting on the physicians to be able to stop the contractions. It's too soon for those babies to be born! And I want to be there when they are!

I have made progress on the blocks for Sunflower's quilt:

Had to go back to the stores for more of the fairies, and on this trip I found another print I thought would work as background. Little tiny roses that look like dots from a distance. You can see them in two of the corners of the block in the upper left of the picture below.

As you can see, I'm still mixing up the background patches. It remains to be seen whether that is a good idea or not.

No phone call yet. Guess I'll go snuggle under the quilt with Mr. Reilly and wait...

Thursday morning update: DD is home from the hospital with drugs in her system to help control the contractions. Apparently her muscles have simply been stretched as far as they will go and the contractions are what happens in that event. She has not officially been put on bed rest but I expect that may happen this afternoon when she sees her OB. Her MIL and FIL are coming up to live with her for the duration. That has obvious benefits but there are significant drawbacks as well. At least we know she's not in imminent danger of delivering those babies too early.

And now I'm off to see what troops I can rally to come to her aid...

DGD Quilt, Take Two

After the false start last week with the big girl quilt for DGD #2, hereinafter referred to as Sunflower, it took me a few days to get my courage up enough to try again. I really wanted to stick with the liberated stars (and you guys seem to like them!) so I figured I'd start with some 12" blocks and sort out the format of the quilt later.

I believe I mentioned in the last post that I found a couple of prints I thought might work as backgrounds when I went to the local quilt shops the other day. One is the stick fairies you see on the left in the picture below and the other is a pink micro-dot on the right end of the spread. The blue fairy print is something I picked up online recently and the bigger pink dotted fabric is yardage I had in my stash. It was one of those pieces I bought with the Black & White & Pink friendship quilt in mind but ended up not using.


In DD's family you can't go wrong with pink and fairies. This is what I have so far:

At this point I haven't entirely decided whether to keep the background patches consistent or not. The micro-dot drops out pretty significantly next to the other two prints. I kind of like hit-and-miss but it may create problems later on when I'm trying to set the blocks together. It would help if I could make up my mind about a layout. Part of me wants to do a strippy set, just for the heck of it. That raises the issue of fabric for the long sashing strips. Of course the simplest thing to do, since I'm under the gun in terms of a Christmas or New Year's deadline, would be to just crank out blocks all the same size and then set them together, side by side. And that may very well be what happens. ;- )

In non-quilty news, we brought home a Christmas tree last Saturday and only just got it decorated today:

Each year we seem to be more selective about which ornaments make it onto the tree. However, as I look at the picture I see a bare spot or two that may need to be filled!

The Next Chapter

I'm back already because there has been a new development in the saga of the "big girl" quilt for DGD #2. But first let me show you how the preemie top came together:

"Teddy Bears in the Park." You should be able to click on the picture to get a better look. I really like the way the border print echoes both the burgundies and the pinks in the crumb blocks. It still needs to be backed and quilted but that will have to wait for another day.

Now, back to the saga of the quilt for DGD. (I really need to figure out how to refer to each of my grandchildren individually since there will be four of them in a few months.) The butterfly print was just too overwhelming as a background fabric as you can see in the lower left block below.

I went to two shops yesterday, looking for suitable background options, and struck out on both counts. Which is not to imply that I bought no fabric at all (perish the thought!). I brought home two pieces that I thought I might be able to make work... and some other stuff that was just too fun to leave in the store. ;- ) (Sorry, no pictures.)

Hours later I was able to have a nice long conversation with my daughter, mother to all of the children in this story. She reminded me that the animal panels she provided...

...had been purchased when DGD #2 was a baby. Which may be why she thought it would be appropriate to include them in her big girl quilt. But it was the infantile quality of the artwork that made it so hard for me to include it in a big girl quilt for this child. She's not a baby anymore!

DD had told me more than once that I didn't have to use the animal panels in DGD's quilt but I felt compelled to do so. Until we came to the conclusion yesterday afternoon that I could use the animals in a pair of baby quilts for the twins that are now on their way. Perfect! DD gets to have the cute animals in quilts and I get to make a quilt that I feel is more appropriate for a toddler growing rapidly into a preschooler and beyond. The question now is, what in the world am I going to make for her?!

Oh, and in a happy aside, I took a container of frozen blueberries with me when I went shopping so I could consume them immediately after running into toxic vapors. I've learned that, for whatever reason, frozen blueberries have the power to mitigate the severity of my reactions. It worked pretty well yesterday. I still had symptoms of exposure afterward but it could have been so much worse.

Up & Down

I made a few more crumb blocks yesterday. Then I remembered some patches I'd cut from a cute teddy bear print decades ago... Sure enough, the patches and the rest of the fabric were right where I thought they'd be. And voila, a new preemie quilt-to-be!

These blocks will finish at 5". That makes this layout 25" square when I fill in those corner spots. My plan is to find something to use as a border at the top and bottom and also use that to fill in the corners. That may change. I don't have enough of the teddy bears to cut four more 5.5" patches so the corners will have to be something different.

At first I had all the bears with their feet pointing south as it were. But I've come to realize that for some quilts it's better to have the pattern of the quilt top look good from any direction, not just one way. I decided this was one of those cases and I think it worked out pretty well!

What I am less happy with is the way the blocks are turning out for DGD's quilt. You may (or may not) recall that I had to hunt for appropriate background fabric for this project. I had some pieces in my stash that I really liked as background but there wasn't enough for a twin size quilt. So I shopped around a bit and brought home the butterfly print you see in the block below, on the left.

I thought that very colorful, busy retro print would be strong enough to stand up to the butterflies. Now I don't think so. I much prefer the look of the block on the right (above).

Granted, those are 9" blocks. The butterflies aren't quite so overwhelming in these 12" blocks with good strong colors for the star points. It's still busier than I want however. So I am planning to go out today, to a couple of different stores in the area, to see what I can find. If I don't come home with a new potential background print maybe I'll at least come home with a possible solution for this dilemma. Let's just hope I don't also come home with a crippling reaction to toxic fumes!