Use It or Lose It: Cirrus Solids / Beauties Pageant 279

** I have to take this week off, but I’ll be back with a new post on Friday, January 24! **

My love affair with Cirrus Solids started back in 2021 when I made my Quilt Buzz Bingo project. I wanted a special solid to sash my blocks, and these yarn-dyed wovens are a little heavier than—and have more personality than—regular quilting cottons.

The color and texture of Cirrus Solids in Ocean, a deep blue, transformed my blocks. Without it, my pink and green blocks looked very “modern Christmas.” The sashing erased all evidence of the holidays and replaced it with “preppy summer.” The palette makes me think of a woven button-down shirt and cutoffs, and the finished quilt is on my bed right now in an effort to inject color into my New England winter.

Ocean wasn’t the only Cirrus Solid in my stash, however: When I reorganized my stash recently, I realized I had 3-plus yards of both Limestone (a white) and Amazon (an aqua). It was time to find those beauties a purpose!

Enter Windmill Weave by Sewspicious. Although there’s something special about mixing Cirrus Solids with quilting cottons, as I did in Quilt Buzz Bingo, there’s something equally special about using solely Cirrus Solids, and I know this bold, graphic design will be striking sewn up in Limestone and Amazon.

I am two blocks into this project. Thanks to my AccuQuilt Go and strip piecing, however, the process is surprisingly fast. I have more to say about using Cirrus Solids and the pattern, but I’ll save those comments for a future update on my progress. : )

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Because People Keep Having Babies / Beauties Pageant 278

Just when I think all the babies in my life have a Michelle-made quilt, another one comes into the world!

The quilt you see here was made for the 4-month-old of a very special teacher. This project is the sixth time I’ve sewn this particular pattern. It’s Little Man, an oldie but a goodie by Camille Roskelley from her book Simplify (Stash Books, 2010). 

What makes a baby quilt pattern worthy of sewing a half-dozen times? Well, Little Man is super cute, and its fabric requirements are easily fulfilled by my stash. Although I opened a layer cake for Little Man #6, I usually cut into the suggested four fat quarters. That’s an easy bill to fill for a gal who doesn’t invest in many baby-friendly prints. 

Little Man is also a fast sew and measures in at about 40" x 50", so the recipient can use it well into his toddler years and beyond (and I can squeak by without piecing a back!). Gah—it’s the best baby quilt pattern!

My only regret with this quilt is that I didn’t get pictures of the quilted-and-bound finish. With my usual machine in the shop, my backup machine and I struggled to finish much of anything before Christmas. This beauty was completed the night before it was delivered, and it went straight from being bound by my humble backup machine to being wrapped up for gifting. To see my past versions of this pattern, including more than one I’ve dubbed a “Little Lady,” click here.

For those of you who fall in love with this project’s turtles and crabs and whales, they’re from Ahoy! by Gingiber. Could that have been Stacie Bloomfield’s first collection for Moda way back when? One way or another, the collection is long out of print. I can cut another (my seventh!) Little Man out of what remains from my layer cake, and then that will be the end of my fun with Ahoy!

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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
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For the Book Lover / Beauties Pageant 277

There have been many speed bumps on the way to holiday gifting this year. Most notably, my beloved sewing machine—a Janome 1600P-QC—stopped working, had to go the repair shop, quilted a small project upon its return to me, and then stopped working again. Although I have a backup, it’s not the workhorse my go-to machine is, and it is currently refusing to perform basic sewing-machine tasks like backstitching. I have persevered, though, and managed to limp across the finish line with a few finishes.

Pictured here is one of them, a little tote bag for a book lover in my life. I was tempted to draft my own tote pattern for this gift but, in a rare moment of pre-holiday clarity, opted to make Sugar Bee Crafts’ Pocket Tote Bag instead. (I was able to follow the tutorial without much hassle, but be warned: My iPad was very grumpy about the number of ads on that webpage. I ended up copying and pasting the instructions in a Word doc just so I could refer to them easily as I sewed.)

I cut into a Rifle Paper print from the company’s Wonderland collection to make this project. The blue woven behind Alice and her friends is something that’s been in my stash for many years—I finally found a good way to use some of it! The combination of the two fabrics is perfect here, and I especially appreciate how the little plus signs of the woven play off the periwinkle background of the print.

I bought a book and a Barnes & Noble gift card to complete this gift—I am sure my 8-year-old niece will love it!

Returning to the subject of my sewing machines ... I think it’s time to rehome my backup machine. In the past, I’ve donated machines to thrift stores, but this one has enough issues that I don’t feel right about passing the machine and its flaws on to someone else. Instead, I’m considering trading it in on a new Janome Memory Craft MC6700P. If you happen to sew on that machine—or its predecessor, the 6600—I would appreciate your thoughts!

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter