Thursday, March 16, 2017

Project Quilting Challenge last one for 2017




I wanted to make a baby quilt this season for a challenge and this was the perfect TIME to make my SNUGGLE TIME baby quilt.  This one measures 40"X48", rather large for a baby quilt but great for two people on the couch to snuggle.

I started by choosing how I wanted to lay out my colors - white, gray, green, and yellow, then I cut out 3 1/2" strips of fabric so I could cut out squares, laid them out in a pleasing pattern, and stitched them together.  I put 9 on the short side and 11 on the longer side.





I saw a quilt with the moon and stars on it and wanted to make mine similar to that so I cut out yellow stars and a moon out of a brighter yellow fabric than in the quilt.  I sewed the star pieces together, cut an opening in the back and turned them inside out so I did not have raw edges on a quilt that would be washed often.  I turned over the edges on the moon (since I did not have enough scrap left of the yellow to sew onto the backside) and added a piece of cotton batting to the back side so you couldn't see the fabric squares through the moon.   I added a white fabric border around the quilt top.


I saw some quilts recently with stitching on both sides of the seam line, so instead of stitching in the ditch, I tried that method.  I will probably not do that again since you have to stitch twice as many rows to get the quilt sewed together that way.  Who did this first anyways?  I'd like to ask them "what were you thinking" and "why didn't you tell everybody else what a pain in the butt this was".  I say again, I will probably not be doing that method again.


Plus my tension must have been off on my top thread because I had to rip out 5 rows of stitching since the backside had tufts of thread hanging off it.  I knew there was something off a few rows into the stitching but I thought nothing of it until my thread jammed and I had to look at the back.  My bad, next time I will know to check often, and if something is looking strange to stop and check it out.  The funny thing is I watched alot of videos lately to get some tips and that same problem was one of the tips - oops guess he was right.


I was going to put on a binding, but I also saw a video lately about using the backing fabric to fold over to make a self binding quilt, so I did that.  Little tricky with the stitching so it didn't pucker but I kept on my walking foot to make it easier.  Finished with a decorative stitch to make it look pretty.

I tried to get my grandson to cuddle up on the couch with it so I had a real cute picture to send into the Challenge but he wasn't cooperating.  He did, however, hide behind it with my husband and I snapped a picture of him peeking around it.  Thanks for looking at my crazy quilting page.




TTFN



Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Elephant Never Forgets



This quilt was made by my sister Carol. I asked her to join in Project Quilting final Quilting Challenge and she did. Since an elephant never forgets (time is forever) this was the perfect time to make this quilt.  She has been wanting to make this particular quilt for her house for a while and I am so glad this challenge motivated her to make one.


She started her elephant by sketching out the basic design she wanted and cut out her strips of fabric.  She kept with a black/white color scheme to go with her new house that we painted grey walls.



After my sister sewed the pieces together she trimmed the elephant and appliqued it onto the background fabric, added a couple borders and stitched together with her batting.


Small 15"X15" wall art quilt made by my sister Carol Sprouse

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Quilting Challenge week 5-Well Dressed Man



For this weeks challenge I was at a loss of what to make. I was watching everybody's posts on the Facebook page but I had no inspiration.  I thought about doing a military one but women (such as myself  USAF 79-83) are also serving so I didn't want to leave them out. Same with other professions that wear a uniform so I was completely without inspiration. I was very sad indeed.

Then I hurt my back bad enough that I stayed home from work for two days this week so I could take muscle relaxers. While scrolling through the "on demand" shows I came across some episodes of Dr Who, and my favorite new Dr is Matt Smith who wears bow ties (since bow ties are cool) and I found my inspiration.


So... bad back and all, I really couldn't do ANYTHING so I waited until Saturday when it started feeling better. I had some scrap blocks left over from a rag quilt I did for my bed so I took a couple triangles and sewed them to two of the blocks and stitched all four together to make one large block. 



Then since I was working with some scraps, I decided to use up some other scraps of my insulbright and cotton batting, so I layed them out onto the back side of my quilt block and smoothed them out. 



I didn't take a picture but I had some leftover birthday party fabric that I laid on top of the batting and pinned the whole sandwich together.  I free motioned quilted the entire piece together using a heart like pattern all over starting from the center corner of each block. 





After quilting I added a wide black binding and finished it off with a decorative stitch on the entire binding edge. And now I have my 18" square Red Bow Tie Hot Pad.