Cynthia Treen's baby quilt

One of my best friends from high school just adopted a beautiful baby boy from Taiwan. After the months long process (with two trips to Taiwan), they brought him home to Boston at the end of September. It must be so amazing--you go somewhere and get to meet your child and spend some time with him/her, and then you have to leave and come home and wait while lawyers, etc work out all of the details and just wait for the call. And then that second trip must be even more incredible--you leave home as two and return as three! That flight home must be just amazing.

We're going to her baby shower this weekend, and I just finished making a baby quilt for them from Cynthia Treen's Last Minute Fabric Gifts. One of my other favorite sewing projects (cotton knit animals) also came from this book.
I really like the book--it's organized in sections--less than one hour gifts, one-to-two hour gifts, two-to-three hour gifts, and more than three hour gifts. There are also a lot of sewing hints and tips in the front and back of the book that would probably be very helpful if I would take the time to read them!

For the quilt, I tried to pick colors that would be good for a baby, but also wouldn't seem too babyish. I wandered the crowded aisles of Sewfisticated until I found fabrics that seemed like they would work well together. Here's the quilt:

spring-themed baby shower

Between working on my evil, evil thesis and planning a baby shower for my friend k, I haven't had much time for crafting! Now that the shower is over and since I have already claimed cooking as my creative practice in an earlier post, I figured I'd report in on the crafts and food.

From the very beginning, I pictured a spring theme--with birds and tulips and greens, yellows and whites for colors. It ended up just as I had pictured it.

I had wanted to make stuffed birds as favors using this perfect (and super easy) pattern. In the end, a friend's very crafty mom came through and made ALL of the birds! They were beautiful...

My dad even made a cute display tree for them.

Whenever I have people over, I try to come up with a menu that can be prepped/made ahead of time so I can hang out with guests without having to be dealing with food. I also secretly am not very good at having help in the kitchen, so it's good for me if everything can be done before people arrive!

I went with a chilled pea & buttermilk soup, beef tenderloin with arugula salad, raspberry chicken with baby spinach salad, snap pea and avocado pasta, and a white bean salad (courtesy of pictures & pancakes). H's mom brought a couscous salad with chicken, dried cranberries, pine nuts, chickpeas and other yummy things. Everything was either cooked or cut up and prepped on Saturday, so it all just had to be put together on Sunday before the shower. Besides for making enough food to feed at least 4 times the number of guests we actually had, everything went smoothly! K's mom brought the fixings for delicious bellinis...I had no idea I even liked bellinis!
At the first meeting of the knitting line last week, Stephanie mentioned Baby Shower Bingo. As soon as she mentioned it, I knew I had to have it--I always think the present-opening part is so awkward, and this would give people something to do. I then spent more hours than I care to admit creating the cards...but it was all well worth it--people got very competitive and into it!
I had fun planning and hosting the shower and really enjoyed honoring the mom and baby-to-be!