Quick quilts and dish cloths

I decided this year that my extended family's gifts will all be handmade. I also wanted to use things I already had in the house.

I wanted to make quilts for my niece and nephew for Christmas. I knew I had limited time, so I went with some quick quilts.







This is the back of Bryant's (6) quilt. I dyed a white sheet with some blue dye I had in the house. I like how it looks like the sky on bright clear day.



This is of course the front. I found 2 of these panels at a thrift store. The other one will be for our couch. I just did a few stitches here and there for the quilting. I wanted to make sure he wouldn't outgrow the quilt to fast. This is twin size. He and his father are hunting and fishing outdoor type guys. I figured a jungle theme was something he could grow up with. At his age he changes his favorites so fast, it's hard to keep up.
(close-up of one circle)

Christine (13) has her room painted in this color blue with green circles all over. Her room has been this color for awhile now so I thought it would be safe to make a quilt in these colors. I made her a pillow case in September in the same colors.

I tried a little free motion quilting around the circles. It is definitely something I need more practice on, but it was actually very fun!



When I saw her pillowcase on her bed recently, I knew that the colors I chose for the pillowcase matched her room perfectly. Which was good because for the pillowcase, I used sheets from Walmart. That made it very easy to match the quilt to everything since I still had some sheets in my stash. I used a flat blue-ish twin sheet for the main background and cut out a bunch of different sized circles from a lime green sheet.



I used another white sheet and dyed it with Bryant's. This made Christine's lighter in color, but it still looks nice to me. Hers has more "clouds" and I like that effect.






For my sister and BIL I went with dish cloths. When she opened them she thought they were potholders. She was already gifted with potholders this year and didn't look too pleased. I'm not sure she really "got" the idea of dish cloths, but once she uses them I think she might get hooked like the rest of us who use them. My family thought I was crazy at first when I started to make them for our house. Now they have all come around because they work so great! They gently scrub the yucky pots and also clean the glasses without scratching them. I clean my floor with them too. They have many uses :)