Ryan's Perdue Crew T-shirt Quilt

Just as the world started shutting down, Ryan was set to leave for a 8-9 week job in North Carolina.  When he's traveling that that, we tend to have more time at home and that usually means I can log some hours on my crafts.  Its fun to have something to keep me busy in the evenings, and, it feels great when I have something to show for all the hours.  Ryan's been asking me to make a t-shirt quilt for him with a stack of crew t-shirts his parents had been storing since he was in college.  He said that whenever they won a race, the teams they beat would give the winner the shirts off their backs.  So, this t-shirt quilt features logos and from a bunch of the teams they raced against, along with some of the bigger races their team participated in. 

This is the first time I'd ever tried making a t-shirt quilt and I am SO thankful I reached out to my quilter (Quilts by Kristy) to ask a few questions about the backing.  When I mentioned making a t-shirt quilt she gave me, by far, the best information I'll get this year.  She told me about a great fusible interfacing that took this project from being bound for disaster (and tears) to one that was enjoyable and actually quite quick to make.  I'm so glad I tried making one of these!  I learned SO MUCH on this quilt, and honestly, I'd be willing to make more of these.  The blocks tend to be large, 12 or 15 inches, which means you can whip up a quilt front pretty quickly.  You can see from the picture, that I used some smaller t-shirt pocket logos in arrangements of 4, along with t-shirt fronts/backs to fill out the remaining blocks.  I wished we'd had more shirts, but I made up for it by using boarders to make the blocks a little bigger and to standardize the sizes.  You can see the C LWT (bottom middle) block needed two boarders to make it the size of the Dad Vail Regatta square next to it.

For the backing, Ryan chose this Purdue fleece.  I was surprised he choose fleece, I'd have guessed it would be too warm for him, but I think the pattern caught his eye.  This was also the first time I used fleece backing.  Oh, and!  This was the first quilt I've made where the primary fabric color was black.  Here's what I learned about that!  Black, while great for a blanket that will be used a lot (it'll hide stains and spills) is HORRIBLE for showing dog hair!  No matter what I do, this quilt seems to be a magnet for hair and fuzz.  I can't tell if it' just because you can see it against the black, or, if this fabric combo means it's extra good at attracting hair.  Who knows!

I wish I'd have used a slightly different layout, I feel like instead of 3 across and 5 down, I should have done a 4x4 quilt.  It feels a little long and skinny to me, measuring out at about 60x90.  Ryan commented that it reminded him of the twin extra long beds we probably all remember from college.  Maybe that means I made it just the right dimensions.  A college t-shirt quilt for a college sized bed.  LOL.

I started this quilt at the end of Feb and had it fully finished, bound, labeled, washed and ready to use a few weekends ago.  The weather has turned to spring (THANK GOODNESS!)  and Ryan is home from his travel job now.  This quilt will probably hold some strong memories for me when I look back to when I made this - 8 to 9 weeks of mostly single parenting, through COVID, school and daycare closures, working while homeschooling, helping the kids navigate our  new normal all while trying to keep some things feeling the same.  For me, having projects like quilts and knitting gives me a sense of normalcy and anchors my days.  These projects help me de-stress, and honestly, that's priceless.  

Rainbows Quilt for Sam & Juan

When we found out that cuzzies, Sam and Juan were expecting - and that it was a girl, it took me about 12 seconds to decide on a quilt for them.  I made this same quilt for a friend's baby a few years back and since then it's always been one of my most favorite makes. 

The fabrics are so fun to work with.  I love working in bright, modern fabrics - rainbow is by far my favorite, and, the tiny 2 inch finished squares are the perfect opportunity to fussy cut and make a look and find quilt.  I love lots of adorable novelty fabrics, like the cute sea horses or firefly in a jar in the picture above.  Including those in a quilt like this is so fun because I can just image the baby growing older and playing "find the...." seeking out all the adorable fabrics hidden within.

One thing that I've always had a hard time expressing when gifting these labors of love to future babies is just how much time I spend thinking about them and their parents while I made these quilts.  Love is quite literally sewing into each and every seam.  There are lots and lots of hours spent on these quilts and I often sit there, playing moments I've had with the parents or maybe with my kids in my mind like a movie reel.  I see times we've spent playing games at the lake, or the day they walked down the aisle together, or imaging what it'll be like for them to hold their very first baby in their arms for the first time. 

These blankets, while beautiful are full of love and made to be used and loved!  Making a baby quilt with white as the accent color seems a little dangerous...babies are messy!  But those stains, and rips and little car wheel marks are so important to me!  They tell the life of the baby and the family around the quilt.  It's just there to soak up all THEIR love once it leave my house. 

This quilt is 50x62 and was made with 4 inch boarders around each block.  Each block is made up of 24 unique 2 inch blocks each hand cut by me.  That's nearly 500 tiny blocks!  It's truly a labor of love, but I love every minute of it!  We quilted it in a pattern called Pretty Posies and used beautiful purple variegated thread.  It turned out SO good!  I love when the quilting of a quilt can shine and it really does on this white background.

We were supposed to have a baby shower for Sam and Juan a few weeks ago, and while one is tentatively planned for just a few days before she's due, I didn't want to risk this quilt not making it to their house before the baby came.  This quilt arrived in the mail to them yesterday, so it's finally time to share all of my hard work with you all.  I can't wait to meet this sweet new baby girl! 

1 Family x 12 (April)

The late winter/early spring months are usually the hardest ones for me to get these monthly family photos in.  Typically we have less going on in these months and we're hunkered down and doing less until the warmer weather start coming back around.  This year its even worse.  We're over a month into social distancing meaning that any plans we might have had are being canceled weekend by weekend and the days are moving by slowly.  I know we're no different than anyone else right now, but if I'm being honest, it's really starting to bum me out!  We miss our people and all of our activities and fun things we have planned.  But, I think (hope) there are brighter days ahead.  With only one week let in Ryan's travel job, and warmer/sunnier weather in the forecast, I'm hoping things start to look up here soon.  

1 Family x 12 (March)

Guys - the world is a crazy place these days.  We all know that, so I'm not going to harp on it here too much, but I use this blog as a family journal and photo album so real life gets documented here.  For the last 6 years, my March family photo has been taken at the Dells.  We've been taking the kids there in March to get the wiggles out and enjoy some time with friends.  This year, Corona Virus changed all of that!  As you can imagine, the kids were so disappointed to lose yet activity (one that they look forward to all year).  So, Ryan planned a little water park adventure for us right at home.

The original plan was to have Jamie/Zach and Chris/ Brenna families over to our pool party as well (we were just one person over the 10 person rule), but it's safe to say that we are all a little freaked out right now so everyone opted to stay home to try and keep their little families safe.  It wasn't the same, we missed the real thing, but we did our best to make lemonade and we're trying to remember how lucky we really are.  I have a feeling this whole ordeal will give us all a lot of perspective.  Maybe life looks a little different on the other side of this.  But, for now, we're taking it one day at a time....and hoping everyone is staying healthy and safe. 

We miss our friends very very much!

Girls Day - Painting Pottery

Presidents day weekend the girls and I had plans to travel to Charlotte NC to visit Ryan while he was working down there.  But, if one things is constant, it's that Ryan's schedule is ALWAYS changing and the timing just didn't work out so we ended up staying home.  Knowing we traded a fun trip for a normal weekend at home, I thought it would be fun to surprise the kids with and early daycare pick up, with Auntie (!) and a trip to the pottery painting studio in Algonquin.

We've never done pottery painting before but it was SO fun!  We each picked one piece to paint.  Hazel picked a guitar jewlery box, Abby picked a cute unicorn mug (for hot chocolate!), Erin got an adorable fox mug and I picked a yarn bowl (used to hold a ball of yarn while you knit so it doesn't get tangled or roll around on the floor).

Abby used the cute mug in the background as her inspiration and she did such a good job.  She was slow, and careful and really thoughtful about her colors and placement.

Hazel, sweet Hazel, was a little more, what's the word, non-traditional?  HA!  Not correcting her was probably the hardest part of the whole evening for me.  I just wanted to take over and do it for her, but that's not what this was about.  So, check out her artistic expression!

Erin's of course, turned out the cutest of all.  She's so talented and I'm so glad I have her around in my life to help me make all sorts of art things like my seasonal chalkboard art, the girls first day of school posters and so many other random projects.  I've even enlisted her to help paint something cool in the kids toy room!  You know, once we drywall in there.

The girls thought this little outing was so much fun and we enjoyed it too!  Next time we'll BYOB and some more snacks.  It took a few weeks for us to get back the finished products, but I picked them up last night, and look how great they all turned out!

Poinsettia Quilt

This past winter I decided it was time for me to make us a Christmas quilt!  Of course, the inspiration of this wonky triangle quilt had something to do with it.  Even though I knew it wouldn't be ready for us to use this past Christmas, it was really fun working in holiday colors over the holidays.  For some reason, I end up getting the majority of my quilting projects done in the winter months.  And this year was no exception!  I already have two (almost three!) finishes under my belt for 2020.  But, I shouldn't brag too much, things will come to a screeching halt here soon I'm sure!

This quilt was designed by Suzy Quilts and the fabric was a curated pack that she put together as well.  I'm not great at coming up with the ideas myself - I don't have the vision, but I can follow directions and I love a good modern quilt!

This quilt measures 56x65 and should be the perfect size for displaying on the couch and cuddling up with over the cold winter months.  I had it quilted in a pattern called Feliz Navidad and we used gold thread.

Isn't it just awesome?!  I'm also pretty happy with how well my quilting came out on this one.  The points of my triangles lined up really well and overall the quilt turned out great.  These wonky blocks though!  They were NOT easy.  The fun thing about them is that they are all different sizes and angles.  You'd think that that "randomness" would make it easier, but I wasted a LOT of fabric making this quilt.  So much so that I had to order extra to finish it!  The wonky triangles were hard to estimate and if you didn't line things up just right, you'd end up not having enough fabric to make your full block.

As pretty as the blocks are, the backing is the real show stopper in my opinion!  The sun was a little too bright this past weekend (what a problem, I know!).  but you can see the gold backing in the next two photos.  I"m not sure how well it'll hold up over time, but gosh, it's pretty!  And so luxurious too!

Anyways, this quilt is now hanging on my quilt rack just waiting til next Christmas.  Though, I'm sure it'll be used for many a fort before then!

Murphy Family Volunteer Day

Guys - we did a thing, and we had SO MUCH fun doing it!!  I'll go back to where it all started.  Back in August a group of the cuzzies rented a house in northern Wisconsin and spent a week enjoying our time together.  One late night over cards (and beers, of course!) we started talking and realized that we could do better.  We realized how fortunate we are, looking around at all we have, and our strong family that supports us and we realized, it was time for us to start giving back.  That was the start of this family volunteer day.

We did some research, looking for a family friendly volunteer opportunity that would welcome kids and we found Cradles to Crayons a charity located in downtown Chicago that provides kids with toys, clothes, hygiene supplies, books and other essentials.  Schools, hospitals, churches, welfare agencies etc all submit requests to Cradles for Crayons to support needy kids and those orders are filled in the warehouse downtown.

Cradles to Crayons takes donations of used items, and new, and money, and then turns those donations into kits given to local kids and families in needs.  In the warehouse, volunteers sort, clean, pack and then bundle the items to send out to the kids. 

On this Saturday in February, about 25 of the Murphy family got together to volunteer and help work at the warehouse.  Guys, we had SUCH a good time!  About 2/3rds of us were in the packing station, which was a really fun place to be.  We got to take the lists for each child and then "shop" the shelves to fill their orders.  It was fun to be so close to the end recipient.  We got to see the fulfillment of all of the hard work that came before this station.

The other 1/3rd of our group moved between two stations during the time we spent there.  They started out in the cleaning station, scrubbing lightly used shoes and getting them ready for repacking.  About half way through the day the switched to sorting clothes.  Going through the bags of donations, sorting for size etc and packaging those pieces up into bags that we (in the packing station) would pick up and bundle for the recipients. 

We spent about 2 hours helping out at Cradles for Crayons and it was one of my favorite activities we had scheduled this winter.  It fact, it sounds like we're already planning the next family give back day - a walk to support pancreatic cancer this summer.  I hope that this is a tradition we start to do a few times a year.  We always have a great time when we're together, and doing something that helps others on top of that is just the icing on the cake.

Oh, and!  Pizza and beer to follow definitely helped keep us motivated.  After we finished our shift at Cradles to Crayons we migrated the group over to Revolution Brewery where we had pizza delivered (it was SO GOOD).  We had lunch, hung out and overall, had a great day!! 

I totally think this is something we'll organize again, so, if anyone has any suggestions of places we could volunteer with a large group, and kids, we're all ears!!