Hi everyone! My name is Vicki and I blog at Sew Inspired. I'm excited to be guest posting here at Piece -n- Quilt for Natalia.
A little bit about me--I grew up in Utah but in 2003 moved to the Kansas City area with my husband and oldest son. We have had 2 more kids since we've been in Kansas, another boy and a girl. The kids are 9, 5, and 1 now. I am busy with taking care of my kids and home but I love to sew and quilt and try to fit in some sewing as often as I can.
I started learning to sew when I was about 6 years old. Then, when I was a little older, I took sewing 4-H classes in the summers for a few years. I made a lot of clothes for myself and my sisters when I was a kid, and I even sewed flat diapers for my baby brother when I was 9 (they just needed to be hemmed around the edges.) When I was in high school, I took a couple years of sewing classes which was a lot of fun; my teacher was really laid back and let everyone work on whatever projects we wanted to do, while still encouraging us to challenge ourselves and improve our sewing skills.
I started quilting in 1997, the year my husband and I were married. My oldest niece was born in 1997 and I made my first baby quilt for her. I made it 45x60 inches, because that was the size of the baby quilt batting I bought. (I make most of my baby quilts around 36x42 inches these days). I hand quilted it, too. That made me a little bit crazy and I decided to take a machine quilting class at my local quilt shop. My quilting on the first few quilts that I machine quilted was really beginner-ish looking but I got better at it each time I tried, and I've found that my machine quilting still improves with every quilt I make. Since then, I've made 12 more baby quilts for my other nieces and nephews and my own kids, and I need to make 2 more in the next few months!
I made lots of quilts last year and I wanted to share one of my favorites with you. I made this Noah's Ark quilt for my niece, Natalie, who's just a few months older than my baby girl. This quilt was a lot of work but I love the finished product.
The pattern is adapted from the book A Quilter's Ark by Margaret Rolfe.
Here are a couple closeups of my favorite animal blocks from this quilt:
You can see more pictures, and read more about this quilt here, if you're interested.
I still do some hand quilting, when the project calls for it. This quilt was machine quilted in the sashing strips between the blocks, and the animals and the ark are hand quilted. I tried machine quilting the animal blocks and didn't like how it looked at all. I used 2 strands of embroidery floss in various colors for the hand quilting and really like how it turned out.
I would love it if you stop by my blog and say hi! I am going to be hosting a quilt-along for this quilt pattern really soon!
Thanks so much to Natalia for inviting me to be a guest blogger today!
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~Natalia
Thanks for being a guest blogger today Vicki. I really enjoyed reading and learning about you. I love this Noah's Ark Quilt, very very cute! :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a great quilt, nice to meet you Vicki.
ReplyDeleteGrat quilt. Nice to know your in blog land, so many blogs that I don't know about yet. I will pop over and say hello, because I am not very far from you, by land.
ReplyDeleteFun to get to know a bit more about you Vicki;) Love the Noah's Ark quilt!
ReplyDeleteOoh! I Love this quilt vicki! THe tail on the elephant, so cute! I'm really like the mix of hand & machine quilting too!
ReplyDeleteThanks Vicki and thanks Natalia for having her. Yes, Noah's Ark is wonderful as is the Figgy Pudding quilt you are having for the quilt-along! I only wish I could find Figgy Pudding to use! It's awesome.
ReplyDeleteThanks Natalia for hosting Vicki. I love the Noah's ark quilt and I think it is such a generous thing that you do making baby quilts for each of your nieces and nephews. What an amazing artist you are and what a kind auntie!
ReplyDeletebeautiful quilt!! the hand stitching is just darling!
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