Things I love: (making) Quilts

Ella has been hinting that I make her a quilt.  I made my first quilt for Adelia when she was a baby.  Then I made this one for Audra:

(this might be my favorite part of the whole thing)

While I knew Ella wanted a quilt, I didn't really have any ideas.  But then recently I was cutting off the bodice from a dress of Ella's (that my mom had made her) to transform it into a skirt.  I thought it was a shame to toss the whole top away, so I cut up some square pieces from it and decided to set them aside.  A couple days later I was hunting through my fabric scrap bin for something else and kept coming across other pieces of fabric from things I've made over the years.  My stack of squares grew and then I talked to Ella about her quilt.

When I told her I didn't have a lot of any one piece of fabric, but just lots of random scraps from different projects, she was super excited and informed me that it could be like a "crazy quilt". 

view from my sewing machine

So that's what we've been working on.  Ella's quilt.  With scraps from:

*the prairie dress my mom made her
*two dresses I've made her
*the curtains in the girls' room
*Audra's quilt
*Adelia's quilt
*doll dresses
*an apron my mom made for her
*a shirt I made for the little girls a few years ago
*other random pieces of fabric that Ella chose, just because she liked them

Ella set out all the squares and determined where she wanted everything to go.  She's delighted with the whole process.  (I'm happy to have a project to work on, too.  There's something about Fall that always makes me itchy to start something with my hands- either a knitting or sewing project.)  Right now I'm going to work on this, and in the meantime, I'm collecting fabric to start a quilt for our bed.  I'm inspired by Posie's log-cabin quilt.  We'll see if I can pull off something so- um, large.