Avant garde baby quilt

Rustled this up over a couple of days when I needed a baby quilt quickly for an artistic mom.  Okay, it took more than a couple of days to piece together all the little bits of fabric, but I do that anyway, to preserve small scraps, to play with colour and value, to test the stitching on the machine, you get the picture.

The original plan, which still exists, is to make a bed quilt for myself.  But I keep getting sidetracked and making cushion covers, tote bags, and quilty gifts for artistic people who I think will appreciate this style (which is not everyone!)

The blocks are about 25 inches square and I make a point of putting similar fabric on the outside of different blocks so they can pieced into larger works without the edges of each block being glaringly obvious.  This one is about 40 inches square I think.  Of course it wasn’t actually measured, but most baby quilts are about that size, so that the backing can be done without piecing.  The back of this isn’t pieced so that makes me feel my guesstimate is more or less accurate.

Baby quilt FINALLY FINISHED!

Here’s a close up showing the quilting on this one, which is technically the best quilting I feel I’ve done, just meandering lines in a grid, using Valdani Withered Blue on top and their Brick (I think it is) in the bobbin.

And to the right, the whole quilt.

What was fun with this was that I didn’t buy any fabric, just found stuff in my existing stash that played together nicely.

Following Joan Ford’s advice in Cut the Scraps! was a big help as all the squares were cut to five inches.  The paisley and the pale blue feathers were yardage which I cut, the others were from scraps I’d already cut down.  It was fast and fun to pore through the clamshell I keep them in and pull out the dark blue, red, peacock feathers and the deep red paisley and then just sit and sew.

The Missouri Star Quilt Company YouTube tutorial on disappearing nine-patch 

was a terrific quick  primer that saved me from making any design mistakes.  You put the focus fabrics in the four corners of the nine-patch, the middle fabric will be sliced into four little squares, and the fabrics in the middle of each outside appear like sashing, which is why I stuck to the blue feathers so there would be some consistency to the design.

When the quilt was started, no one knew whether the baby would be a boy or a girl.  Here in British Columbia you can only find out by paying extra for a special test.  Anyway the not knowing meant I needed to choose colours that were not gender specific, which I think I achieved.  In the end it was a boy, but this would also be suitable for a girl too.

Local Quilt Store comes through where it matters

Of course there’s never a good time for a sewing machine to be temperamental, but in the middle of sewing the binding onto a quilt that has to be delivered this weekend because the recipient is about to move overseas is one of the worst times.  What a blessing that the awesome ladies at  Satin Moon Quilted Garden agreed to clear off a table so I could use one of their machines.  This despite having the store full of the Christmas Bazaar handcrafts at the front, and the classroom/sewing area temporarily well filled with notions.  They even spoiled me with fresh coffee, which really hit the spot!  Thank you Linda, Susan, and Maureen!

So:  Mission accomplished, now I just have to sew the back down and do the label.

This is something no one can compete with online.  Local independent retailers bring so much to our communities in service, support and character.  Mindful of the need to show support, and aware of the excellent specials that were on, I indulged did my bit for the local economy:  isn’t this pear batik drool-worthy?

Disappearing 9-Patch, work in progress!

This is a process shot of a disappearing nine patch quilt while it was on my design wall.  Other bits and pieces are peeking out from the sides, this was just right on top of everything.

It’s now assembled and in the process of being quilted.

The Missouri Quilter YouTube video I watched was great as it clearly explained what to expect and how to decide what fabric goes where.  That was how I picked the light blue feathery print for the four pieces in the middle of each outside, so they would become sashing.  I put my focus fabrics in the four corners and the centre fabric was consistently either dark blue or the rust fossil fern print.

There’s many ways to put disappearing nine patch together but for this first attempt I decided to follow the advice given and ensure that I wasn’t trying to match a whole lot of inside seams.  Just matching the seams on the blocks was quite enough of a challenge, thank you.  The design wall was a blessing as the blocks stayed up for over a week while I rearranged them to not have any matched focus fabrics touching each other.  Doing that probably took longer than it took to do the actual sewing of the top.  You can tell this was still in design because there a several places where focus fabs were touching.

Point of Pride:  Everything came from my stash, no shopping was involved!

Image recaptured!

Well, we recovered the “lost” quilt photo by taking the memory card out, and here is the finished quilt.

The challenge fabric is the black with the multicoloured stars.  You can see it in the two biggest black stars that are not purple.

It was interesting to see what other Guild members had done — one made the challenge fabric into prairie points and put them in the middle of the quilt, i.e. sewn between the seams rather than the usual putting them around the edge.  Another person used skinny strips as an accent.

My grandson’s favourite quilt had dinosaurs appliqued onto it.  He kept returning to look at it.

The next project I am focusing on finishing is Geode, which is almost but not quite 60 inches square.  The top is pieced and this aft I started piecing the backing, which is also cool in a minimalist way.  Will post front and back pix when ready.

The plan is to spring for quilting rather than trying to do this one myself.  I feel that’s my best chance to do something this size that I can feel comfortable having on display.  Although I want to get this completed, there is no mad rush to have it quilted, which makes me popular with the quilter at this crazy time of year!

The one that got away

No, although this sounds like the beginning of a fish story, it’s a quilting tale.  I thought I took pix of the baby quilt in all its finished glory but I will have to take the camera to London Drugs to see if anyone can actually access it.  The pictures were taken and seemed to be there, but the memory card was not in the camera at the time.

What Was I Thinking!

… and a Stupiphany

at long last the baby challenge quilt has been birthed and now that I can see it as a single piece as opposed to blocks laid out next to each other, I’m liking it better and feeling that hopefully the family that ultimately receives it will like it to, or at least not totally hate it.

Photos of the finished quilt will appear sometime next week.  In the meantime (1) I have to play by the Quilt Guild rules and (2) it still has to be quilted and stitched closed.

So for now, the photo above shows what it does NOT look like!  I realized in time that the black and white pebbly fabric is not a good background.  There’s enough blocks with it in to make a doll’s quilt, which is probably what I’ll do with it, AFTER finishing the projects I committed to finish.

My slogan for this year was “Create and Complete,” and I need to keep it for 2010 too at this rate!

Decided that posting pix of stash is probably counter productive because in reveling in stash and my plans for it I fool my mind into believing I actually accomplished something.  Something other than shopping, that is.

The stupiphany of the day hit me like a ton of bricks.  A thought that came out of nowhere as I was taking a short walk enjoying fresh air and sunshine this morning.

I finally realized that it’s a good thing that I can’t sing.

Never in my whole life was I ever allowed to be in a choir or a chorus.  In high school I was told to mouth the words for the Christmas concert so as not to ruin the performance of the other 599 girls!  When my son was two he was already telling me not to sing.  Apparently even my humming is off key, although it sounds perfect to me.

Today I realized that if I could sing this would be one more distraction in my life.  I have enough trouble with the things I am blessed to be able to do.  If I was always rushing off to  practice with the Sweet Adelines I probably wouldn’t be as good at writing, art, or quilting.  And given that Islamic worship takes a different (and to me less distracting) form, I might miss choral music.

A Star is Born

The Victoria Quilters Guild has launched a new challenge. To encourage the production of more baby quilts which go to babies and children at the local hospital, and to tie in with the theme of next year’s quilt show, Quilting with the Stars, two challenge fabrics were chosen to be in a baby quilt top. This is a scan of the fat quarter I chose.

This is a teaser really because the rules are that our work must be kept secret from other Guild members until November!

Various ideas are flying around my head, but nothing will be online until after November. Math is involved in my thinking because we have a fairly tight size range and I don’t want to design something using more than I have of this fabric.

Feel like I’m returning to square one in a way, there are many old sketches on graph paper where I would figure out how to use all of a certain fabric. And the graph paper is out again this morning. Even wished for a moment that I had a quilting software program but that is velleity rearing its seductive head!