Drunk Babies, Part II

....and also drunk sewist, if this free-motion quilting is any indication.

After a flurry of activity around the holiday break, I slacked off a bit in January, but am back at my machine and now trying to beat some upcoming deadlines.  One of them is the impending birthday of Emmy, the as-yet-not-arrived-daughter of my cousin's daughter, and while I'm sure that familial relationship has a name I'll be damned if I know what it is.  Let's go with calling me her "aunt", a suitably generic term that nevertheless gives me a reason to make her a wee blanket to welcome her arrival.  Though probably a Bad Influence Aunt, given that I still think the idea of drunk babies is hilarious.

So:  welcome, Emmy!  And congratulations, Amy and Jesse!

Back in the fall, Emmy's mama Amy came to Chicago for work and was accompanied by my cousin Mike (Amy's pa), and some of their midwestern family came into the city proper, to overeat at a chophouse chosen to assuage Amy's steak craving, and to drink convivially, and to figure out how we could invest in Mike's dream micro-brewery, and to ultimately wind up at a Wrigleyville bar where there was a karaoke contest going on (that last being most definitely my fault).

Drunk Babies

I sent two quilts out today, both started a way back in 2013.  The first was this here baby quilt for a former lifting buddy of mine, Mags, who has since gone back to greener pastures in WI and has just last week spawned her very first infant, Anne.  Hooray Mags!

The proud parents didn't find out the sex of the baby until she was born, though, so Mags gave me free rein to pick colors and do whatever.  I started with some wonky stars but didn't like them, so I gave this one a shot: a version of Julie Pickles' Mod Pop.  I say "version" because I didn't buy the pattern, since I already have a Drunkard's Path template that I could use for this sucker: lord knows I needed the practice on curved seams, but also it amuses me to make something for a baby called Drunkard's Path.

So this is the basic block, using my giant pile of thrifted men's shirts as the grays.  The plan for the color part, since I was not tied to anything gender-specific or nursery colors, was ALL the colors:  a colorwash quilt.  Exciting!  Turns out, though, that the best way to do a colorwash quilt is NOT to start with something that is yellow, orange and green and work out in a circle from there.  Bad plan, for not the least of which reason is that it turns out I didn't have all that much green in my stash to begin with and should have husbanded its use a little more carefully.  As it is, "green and pink" ended up being one of my color areas, to confusing effect.  To wit: this ended up in the middle -