Kawaii Kitten

My daughter loves to draw.  It's a normal part of her every day.  When she showed me this simple kitten it just made sense to make it into a wall hanging.

We started by scanning and blowing up her original sketch.  The Small One chose fabric and I went to town using a combination of reverse applique and whole-cloth applique

After the major details were down my daughter drew all the smaller features back onto the face and I followed her lines with thread.

I like using a darning foot with a zig zag stitch while stitching left to right to make thick lines easily.

We are both very pleased with the result.

I'm linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Busy Hands Quilts

Butterflies

Last week my older daughter told me that her teacher was expecting and could we . . . (she gestured towards my "in case of baby" quilt stash).

I was all about giving her teacher a quilt, but I saw an opportunity to veer off my self imposed to-do list to do something that's been in my brain for a while.

Grandma gave me these flowers and butterflies already cut.  I have no idea where they come from.  There are a few butterflies that we didn't use that celebrate Saskatchewan's 50th year as a province.  That was 1955.  I have no idea if all the fabric is from the 50s but they definitely appear to be vintage.

I sandwiched a top without butterflies and quilted a diamond pattern with 6" parallel lines using a walking foot.  Then we placed the butterflies and I FMQed over them using a darning foot.  The edges of the butterflies were snipped so that hopefully they will fray really nice and soft when the quilt is washed.

The Small One gave this quilt to her teacher this week.  The teacher's older son has asked if he could keep it.  I suppose that means they like it :)

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and She Can Quilt today.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

The Lion Sleeps Tonight started with a graphic I saw on the internet.  It was from THIS website.

I separated all the parts and pieces and printed four full sized prints (48 x 36) to use as templates and maps.

The first map was just for the background.  Then I made a monkey.  From the start, the goal was to not use fusible or interfacing.  Instead, the bottle of starch got a workout.  It worked well.

Lots more animals followed.  Eyes, mouths and tiny pieces were the only bits that had fusible on the back.

The grass was fun.  It was cut at random and sewed down to the background at the bottom of the fringe.

Once the background was done, the whole quilt was sandwiched together and the animals were pinned to the top.  Using a walking foot and a darning foot, the animals were thoroughly quilted to the sandwich.

This is probably the most fun I've had making a quilt.  Start to finish, it was a big adventure.

Welcome to the Geek Side

Finally, a finish!  This has been something I've been working on mentally for a while, figuring out the logistics of it without having to piece or use loads of fusible or applique by hand. 

I had practice doing this quilt on another project that I can't post quite yet.  It involves lots of starch and a prepared sandwich.

First I quilted the entire sandwich.  With Star Wars quotes, don'tcha know?  I cut out pieces, folded them under a quarter inch (sometimes using a fabric glue stick) and ironed them to give me a nice crisp edge.

Then the applique pieces were layout on top, pinned ruthlessly and quilted to the sandwich using both a darning foot and a walking foot (depending on piece size).  Some of the more complicated bits were sewn together first (like the grey eye) and then sewing onto the quilt.

As the newest Star Wars movie just happened to come out, it was easy to find flannel backing that continued the geek theme.  Really, though - I would have preferred something "A New Hope" themed.  Ah well.

Melon Peel

Inspired by:  Craftsy Modern Quilting class

Fabrics:  The grey was a Christmas gift.  The petals were from my scrap drawers.  The back was an amazing find at MCC.

Thoughts:  This is a quilt that's been on my list for at least 6 months.  

It's one of seven projects in a modern quilt class I took on Craftsy.  Sort of.  I mean, the style (melon or orange peel) was used in the Craftsy class, but I had no wish to individually appliqué 36 petals on to individual squares then piece them all together and blah blah blah. 

Remember the hexis I did?  Click here to refresh your rememory.  It was the first time I sandwiched a top and then added the details after.  I knew I'd need to do it again,

Note to self:  Hand positioning is critical if you don't want jogs like the oopsie above.

This might just be top five for me.  I really like it.  I'm a little annoyed by the shrink.  Either I needed to wash the grey a second time or my 20p / 80c batting shrunk a bit.

There it is.  I have two more from this Craftsy class to quilt - one is by hand and it's on a frame - it will be a while.  The other is ready to go whenever I get the urge.  When it's done I'm calling this a complete (because the hand quilted one will take forever) and starting a new course.

Baby Hexis

Date:  April 2015

Size:  30 x 42

Pattern:  n/a

Best Buys / Special Fabrics:  The hexis were a gift from a friend.  The grey was a gift from a sister.

Lessons Learned:  Don't assume gifted pre-cuts are the same size (I do this often.)

Thoughts:  This is my first finish of the year (beside ten potholders).  I have MANY tops waiting to be quilted.

I love the simplicity of this quilt - it took a weekend to make because I laid the hexis on top of a quilt sandwich and quilted them in place.  The edges will fray beautifully in the wash.  I really want to do this again with different shaped fabrics - squares and/or rectangles.

It is quite likely LBCQ will be doing a show at the library again this fall.  I'll save this for the show.

7 Down 5 to Go

These blocks are orphans my grandmother game me.  I love using her blocks.

Teddy Bear-topia

This quilt was designed by my seven year old daughter.  She just assumes that whatever she dreams up I can do (insert super hero costume here).  The very first bit of piecing was a Curved Seam.  I've had very poor success with curved seams so to keep my sanity with this one, I cut the curve from the blue, ironed it under a ¼ inch and used a decorative stitch to sew it to the green.  Then I trimmed away extra green from the seam allowance under the blue.  It worked for me, but I doubt that's how they teach it :)

We used a graphics program to draw the bear then print it, cut it out and piece it back together.  The paper pieces served as our templates.

Note to self:  My background brown was not a whole lot larger than the lighter brown going on top of it - sometimes my satin stitches on the top and bottom layers overlapped.  Either design the background bigger or the foreground smaller. 

I didn't use a iron-on bond product for the larger pieces when I attached them to the background, but I did use interfacing - for the most part that went really well.  The smaller things such as eyes were glued on before they were stitched.

I used interfacing

Another note to self:  Cut background to size AFTER the applique has been sewn on.

Also - tractors are never green in my family's world.  Just sayin'

My daughter also picked all the fabrics and all the thread.  The red inner border was the last thing she picked.  I think it's fantastic.

The Small One also had me do trapunto.  She doesn't even know what that is, but the bear and the clouds have extra layers of fill - the belly has an extra layer again.  I used YouTube videos to teach me the ins and outs.

The whole reason for this quilt was the tie - here it is - the last piece of the puzzle.  Her cousin is due in September.  I hope s/he enjoys the teddy bear.

Date:  May / June 2014

Size:  36 x 40ish

Fabrics / Best Buys:  All these fabrics were from my stash.  The four patches were made from a Hoffman Bali Snap that I was given for Christmas.

PCC 5 of 6

Date:  January 2014

Reason:  My goal is to make 6 baby quilts for the Pregnancy Care Centre in January.

Fabrics:  Grandma has given me a lot of blocks.  More than 200.  Here are six of them.

Thoughts:  This is my favourite of the six.

Fall For Autumn

Pattern Location:  Australian Patchwork and Quilting Annual 2004 and Vol 12 No 6

Size:  70 x 70

Date:  November 2007 - December 2013

Inspiration:   As a new quilter, I saw this pattern and fell in love.

Special Fabrics:  Grandma gave me a box of scraps.  Many of these made it into this quilt.  I collected fall colours for a long time.  Aunt Sandie found the perfect backing.

Lessons Learned:  

*  Buy quality fabric.  Loose weave is the pits

*  Cut carefully

*  Use heat 'in bond for applique

*  Cut away extra layers when sewing triangles into corners.  The extra layers are really hard to quilt through.

*  Watch beginnings and ends of seams - I have a tendencey to flare out.

Thoughts:  

This turned into a Christmas gift for my parents-in-law.

The original medallion was out by over half an inch - I unsewed it and made it into a wall hanging.

This quilt was machine quilted.  Some was with a walking foot, the rest was using Leah Day's techniques.

Snippets Wreath

Date:  2008

Reason:  This was a project done by LBCQ at Dora's house.

Fabrics:  The border was a gift from my friend Kath

Lessons:  The snippets technique includes using an iron-on applique on the wreath pieces that are cut into small "snippets" and arranged in the desired shape.  Iron on several layers for best results.

Life is Precious

Date: 2008

Reason:  Applique Class

Fabrics:  The leaves and stem piece were provided by the class teacher, a friend from LBCQ.

Lessons:  Needle turn applique, piped borders

Thoughts:  This is one of my first attempts at machine quilting - I only had a walking foot back then.  I wanted to continue the stems and leaves into the quilting.

This is actually a bit of an emotional wall hanging.  The leaves that my friend provided were leftovers from a quilt that she made while sitting in the hospital at her husband's side.  Using the same pieces that my friend did during a very hard time in her life reminds me that life is precious.  I just can't take it for granted.

My friend's quilt (called Lifelines) and her story is in the book Little Bits of Comfort.

Pink Baby

Date:  June 2012

Size:  30 x 30

Reason:  I took some pretty pinks from the blocks my grandma gave me because I knew they would make a cute baby quilt.

Fabrics:  Scraps from my stash, my grandma's blocks and a baby blanket of my daughter's.

Lessons:  My machine quilting is getting better!  Although I'm not doing Leah Day's tutorials per se, most of my quilting information comes from her blog:  http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com.  She has oodles of videos.  My opinion of machine quilting went from "pshh, not happening" when I saw her first video to "I could try it once" to "wheeeeee" after my first quilt.

On the half square triangle centre, I did a loopy style of stippling to hopefully emulate the flight of the butterflies that are appliqued in the centre.

Thoughts:  I still need to learn what I am doing wrong or how to fix my wavy edges.  Is it a quilting issue?  Am I a bad measurer?  Do I need to square my quilts better?  Probably it's all of the above.

I used a baby blanket we no longer needed.  I kept the 'satin' binding from the blanket to use on the quilt.

I traded this to a co-worker for some NuCerity.

Small Blessings

Pattern:  Australian Patchwork & Quilting Volume 10 #2

Date:  2007

Inspiration / Reason:  When I saw this pattern in 2005, I instantly thought of a good friend and decided to make it for their next baby.  It was done (mostly) in time for their son who arrived late in 2008.

Special Fabrics / Best Buys:  I won some of the fabric at a quilt show.  I also won a gift certificate to a quilt shop.  That took care of the back.  When a friend found out I was doing this quilt, she gave me all her scraps from when she made the same quilt!  I also received $30 in gift certificates when I participated in a clothing drive.  That helped quite a bit.

Lessons Learned:  As this was my first quilt,  everything was a lesson.  Little Bits of Comfort taught me everything I needed to know as I needed to know it.  

Everything can feel right in theory, but be wrong when it goes together.  Several colours meant for the quilt did not fit once the rest was cut.  last minute adjustments were necessary which meant I have "orphan blocks"  - pieces cut but not used.  I think I should keep a record of these pieces so they are not forgotten.

Thoughts:  I could also add to lessons learned:  friendship.  I had great help all along the way.  Some people for fabric, LBCQ for instruction.  Another friend loaned me her sewing machine for the whole summer.  I borrowed a lot of supplies from another friend for the duration of the quilt.  I think that God's hand has been in this quilt.  Too many things happened for it not to be:  Free and gifted fabric, coupons and other things just all add up to divine influence.  I just wonder:  why?