Embroidery for the Lioness

After you read this post, you might start to wonder if I'm some sort of fiend for embroidery in quilts... well, not exactly.  Actually, I intended to do just one quilt with embroidered squares, for my first niece.  Each of my sisters made at least one embroidered square for me to incorporate into the quilt, which I thought was a wonderful way to give her a tangible expression of love from people that she may not get to see often.

Then the Lioness came along... my second niece, she's quite fierce and likes to ride her lion-on-wheels down the hallway, while making roaring noises.  Her mother naturally wanted to make a similar quilt for her.  With kittens.  I shared a preview of the Lioness' quilt-in-progress in my UFO post:

 I just recently got back the last outstanding embroidery block for this quilt, so my linen UFO is back on hold while I go ahead with this one.  Speaking of the embroideries, those happened during my year-off of blogging, so I brought them all out a few days back and took pictures.  I will be sharing them over the next few weeks, while I'm busy IRL with attending weddings, vacationing, etc.  So, to kick us off, here's the one I just got back (in exchange for the picnic quilt, actually):

Isn't that hat just the cutest thing?

I love the stitching she used for the apron, and the little flowers are so cute!

And I also like the cool way that she signed her block

At niece number three (Lil' Monkey) we were faced with a dilemma  - continue our embroidering ways, knowing that there would be at least three additional embroidered quilts to make (the nieces just don't stop coming...), or put a stop to the madness before it consumed us all.  I left that up to Lil Monkey's mother, "A" of the embroidery square above, because she's the least embroidery-inclined but also the one who would have to deal with Lil Monkey's potential tears.  In the end, we hit on the solution of making the embroideries smaller, and the R-squared quilt plan was born.  I'll be taking embroidery supplies with me when I visit them next month... in hopes that I can get her to finish hers while I'm there (and avoid having to bribe her later with another picnic quilt).  Wish me luck!

P.S.  I guess I don't mind bribing my sister with quilts... especially when I get back pictures of her youngest daughter enjoying them (can you believe that hair??):