Another baby quilt

This quilt was inspired by a quilt I saw in a magazine that had lots of dresden plates all over it, seemingly placed at random but I'm sure an awful lot of thought went into it.

The young lady this is for already had a very colourful bedroom before her arrival so it was only fitting that the quilt was full of colour. I wanted to turn my plates into colourful flowers.

I used the magazine template to make the flowers / plates and cut one from sturdy card to be used over again.

I thought I would have 6 flowers and there are 20 petals on each flower so I needed 120 petals cut from brightly coloured fabrics.  I got all of the fabric from spotlight and asked for 20cm cuts (which was still too much).  I've got lots of leftovers.  And I had some charm squares which were perfect.

The purple piece on the left above is how the petals look when they are cut and then they are folded lengthways, right sides together and a quarter inch seam is sewn along the top edge - I chain-pieced mine for speed.

Then turn the seam inside out to form a point and press as above.  Try to keep the seam centred so that your petals are even.  The one above is bit off centre... oops. Do this for 20 petals.  You can then lay them out in the order you want to sew them.  

Sew two petals together, right sides together, usual quarter sea allowance. It's more important that they meet at the top - don't worry if they are uneven at the bottom as this will be hidden later.  

Keep adding petals one by one, or you can chain piece them in pairs, then fours - whatever is easiest for you.

You will end up with a complete circle that should look a bit like the one above.

 For the centre piece, cut around a circle template about a half inch bigger than your template.

Use a rough tacking stitch around the template...

...and pull on the thread so that it gathers around your circle template.  Iron this in position then remove the card template and iron again.  You should have a nice round circle of fabric with turned edges like the one below, ready to appliqué on to your flower.  

I usually appliqué using a zig-zag stitch but I think I'm about to start experimenting with something a bit more secure. Repeat for all of your flowers.

I know I should have taken more photos of the various stages but I was running out of time on this one.  The pic below is the finished quilt top.

To make my blocks I used 10 and half inch squares of white so that they would be 10 inches after seaming. The elephants came from another quilt I had been working on.  They were made by using double-sided fusible webbing, ironed to the white block and appliquéd with a zig-zag stitch.  The blocks with green petals on the side and bottom were half-width and the leaves/grass pieces were made in the same way as the flower petals and then turned under and sewn at the raw edges.

Each flower was appliquéd to a white block and I left gaps in the appliqué stitches to tuck in the rik-rak stems. Then the stems were sewn down with as straight a stitch as I could manage (slowly does it).

 I then finished the top with a 5 inch border.

The finished quilt - front above and the back below.  Love the back of this quilt.  I stitched in the ditch around the blocks and used big stippling on the border.  I wasn't sure about leaving such big gaps in the quilting but the wadding pack said I could leave up to ten inches unquilted...

I wish I had hand-finished the binding on this quilt - the machine binding is a big mess when you don't get it exactly right.  Luckily the baby probably won't mind and I've asked her mother not to look too closely at my shonky stitches.

What to do next... I know it's only August but I've ordered some Christmas charm packs.  Bad girl!!  

Sugar skulls

Saw this on eBay today - previously only available in fat quarters - there is now some stock in yardage. Hurrah.  I can sense a Christmas present....

Battenburg Cake Baby Quilt

I finally learned to take a few more pics as I go through a project. Moving on from the colour-run disaster of the first quilt, I have started another.  This one might even make it as a gift for someone...

There was a sale in Spotlight.  $1 fat quarters - I had to get a couple.

The yellow was quite busy with all the coloured flowers so I picked a pale pink solid to go with it.  I cut them into 2 and half inch strips and made six little 9-patch blocks.  

I was advised not to frame them in white as it would make the yellow and pink look 'washed out'.  Clearly, I ignored that advice - sometimes you just have to go with a gut instinct.

Still wanting to do something with the elephant template I made a while back, I decided this was the time for some appliqué.  I made some blocks with elephants and some with flowers.  

The shapes were traced on to double-sided bonding paper and bonded to the wrong side of the pink / yellow fabric before bonding again on to the white block.  I then used a small zig-zag stitch in pink around the outside of the elephants and flowers. The pink elephant also has some decorative stitches for the eye and around the head.  I got a bit carried away...   

Then stitched them all together to make the centre panel:

I then added some pink sashing and a pink border to break up all that white and ended up with a finished quilt top.  The backing is alternate pale pink and lemon blocks in keeping with the Battenburg cake look.

cake.....not quilt.

This is where we're currently at after basting and pinning.  No idea how to quilt this but I've just revisited my last blog and the list of things I supposedly learned from my last quilting experience.  I'm already regretting making the cake-style backing because I didn't get the seams to nest exactly in the centre (again), even although I lined it all up and pinned them in place! note to self: keep the backing simple.  Hey, at least I pre-washed all the fabric this time :-)

This photo doesn't really do it justice - it's so pretty and very girly.  2 of my friends already know that they are having girls so I'm hoping that it will end up good enough to give as a gift once I've been let loose with the walking foot.  I'll post some updates when I get there...

*UPDATE* - So this is the trouble with adding fancy stuff to the middle of the quilt where you have to start quilting.  What was I thinking?  I tried quilting over the top of an appliquéd elephant on a practice block a while back - it didn't really work out so I tried going around it - that didn't really work either... This time I decided to stipple around the elephants - it looks ok on the front but the back will have big spaces where the elephants are.  Didn't really think that through, did I?

Another update: I have now finished this quilt and was pleased with the front until a bird left me a little message all down the front while it was drying on the line.  After the second wash, some of the appliqué started to lift. where I had just caught the very edge with the needle - it frayed back too far past the stitches so I had to do some repairs to the pink elephant and it now looks a bit rubbish...

More photos - pre birdie accident. This actually isn't a great pic in this light...

And the back...

Lessons learned:

• Keep the back all the same fabric until you're better at piecing and quilting. 
• Try just quilting right over the top of that appliqué to avoid any gaps on the back. 
• Definitely don't try to machine the binding on.  This one was machined to the front of the quilt and hand finished at the back.  Took ages but the results were so much better than previous attempts to do all of the binding by machine. 
• White backgrounds are ok :) 

 

First Quilt

So the first attempt at a quilt started out ok-ish.  I thought I would start simple so I got some 5" squares and sewed them together pretty randomly. Some squares came from a charm pack from Lincraft and the others were in my stash.  The only 'planned' piecing was to have the 4 dark blue squares in the centre of each 9-square block. It was supposed to be scrappy and I thought maybe it would make a good baby quilt or play mat (lots of our friends are pregnant at the moment).

Well, for a 'simple' quilt, I had issues from the start. When I joined my rows together, not all of the seams matched up exactly which meant that a lot of my points were off. Booo.

The dark blue fabric took me a while to find and of course as soon as I got it home, I started cutting it up and sewing it together....before pre-washing. D'oh. More on that later...

I used bamboo batting for this quilt - I've got nothing else to compare it with but it did seem to shed a lot of fluff as I was working with the quilt.  I've picked cotton batting for the next project so I'll see how that compares. The cotton stuff feels better...

I should have taken more pics as I went along but as usual, I forgot...This is a photo of the front after quilting:

Given that many of my corners didn't line up neatly, I couldn't really stitch in the ditch, which I think would have been the easiest option as a beginner, so I went for a shadow square within each square.  Bad choice - there aren't two squares the same size on the entire quilt top and having to pivot the quilt a million times at the corners became quite tedious. I've been practising free motion quilting following video tutorials from Leah Day's Blog but I'm still doing something wrong - the tension on the stitches at the back of the quilt is wrong and it doesn't improve by adjusting the needle tension. I read somewhere that the problem is related to the speed with which you move the quilt around relative to the speed of the needle. I don't think I'm ever going to get the hang of the free motion stuff. Anyway, I used it here on the borders of this quilt. I used a contrasting sand coloured thread when I probably should have used a matching thread to hide the dodgy stitches :-)

This is a closer look at the free motion action - I believe this is called meandering or stippling:

It looks ok in these pics but trust me, some of the stitches are pretty ugly and the back is scary...

Can't really see the detail here - probably a good thing...I had a bit of puckering on the back too.  Again, not sure how to fix that as you can't actually see the back of the quilt when you're quilting and therefore don't know that it's puckering. It's a minefield.

I used the same fabric as the backing for the binding and I decided to machine-bind it.  I cut binding strips at 2 1/2" and I used that finishing method where you create a pocket in one of the binding tails and slot the other tail inside.  I wouldn't use this method again - it's way too bulky. I did use a matching thread for the binding and I'm glad I did - it's pretty shocking.  Very difficult to keep a completely straight line.  I also had to unpick half of my stitches because the bobbin thread got into a big loopy, tangled mess on the underside and I didn't spot this until I had finished.


This is the finished quilt (taken at night so the lighting isn't great):

Given that I hadn't washed the dark blue backing / border fabric I ran out and got some Colour Catch - which is supposed to 'catch' colour and stop it from bleeding into other fabrics.  I thought it had survived the wash but now that it's dry, I can see that the colour has in fact transferred to the lighter squares.  Disappointing.

So, lessons learned from this first little quilting project:

1. Pre-wash fabric.
2. Accuracy with quarter inch seams - it's important later.
3. Accuracy with nesting seam lines so that stitching in the ditch is an option for quilting.
4. Learn which direction to iron the seams when piecing.
5. Did I mention that you should pre-wash the fabric?
6. Keep designs on the back simple - sometimes the quilting pattern on the front won't work on the back.
7. Reconsider the bamboo batting.
8. Finish the binding tails by stitching on the bias rather than tucking to minimise the bulk.
9. Hand finish the binding on the back of the quilt.
10. Until you get better at quilting, use a matching thread to disguise your nasty wobbly stitches :-(

I did say at the start that this might end up in the dog's bed, particularly if the colour-run thing didn't go to plan:

He seems to like it...

*UPDATE* - Bought some Colour Run stuff from Dylon and it seems to have worked.  It involved washing the quilt in a hot wash at 60 degrees, which can't have been good for it but since it was trashed anyway, I had nothing to lose.  The dark blue has washed out of the lighter squares (hurrah!) but the dark blue isn't too dark any more.  On a serendipitous note, the quilt now looks vintage, which was what I wanted from that  indigo fabric in the first place - it's a bit 'faded jeans'. It has also shrunk a bit, giving that crinkly look which has done wonders for my dodgy quilting stitches.  It looks a bit too shabby chic to give away as a gift but I'm now quite pleased with the end result.        

Fabric Sale

Oh dear, The Fabric Store in Brisbane had 4-day sale with 50% off everything in store.  However, I went in yesterday and nothing really jumped out at me.  I got a really fine cotton plaid in pink, blue and cream to do more jammies / lounge pants.

This is the fabric:

Sewing machine is boxed up for the moment but maybe I'll get some time at the weekend.

Quilting

I like the idea of quilting but I'm not sure if I've got the skills - I'm not neat enough and was never much good at geometry.

I saw this beautiful quilt in a shop in Clayfield a couple of weeks ago and fell in love with it. It's made in India and I think it is in the style of Ralli Quilting.

I would love to be able to make one of these...I've made my elephant template and had a go at making just one block.  Really struggled with the appliqué technique though - At first I thought the motifs were two layers of fabric stitched right sides together and turned inside out. I tried this but it didn't really work - too fiddly. From everything I've read about ralli quilting, it seems that the ladies who make these turn tiny hems in the motifs by hand as they go along.  I don't think I'm ready for a hand-stitched project on this scale just yet...

I got a walking foot and a free-motion quilting foot a couple of weeks ago.  No idea what to do with either of them really.  So now I've been scouring the internet and discount book shops for instructions.    So far The Free Motion Quilting Project is the best I've found with basic instructions for beginners, a quilt-along and video instructions.  There's also a series of tutorial videos from The Missouri Star Quilt Co - great ideas for quilt tops but I think they do all of their quilting on an industrial long-arm machine so there's not much on actual quilt stitching technique or designs (or maybe there is and I just haven't found them all yet).  I had my first go at machine quilting, using my elephant block, bamboo batting and calico backing.  It's not a great first attempt - there is some puckering in the fabric - not sure why as I thought the walking foot was supposed to prevent that from happening.  I've been told that I made the mistake of stitch basting instead of pin basting...I also haven't worked out how to bind it yet but I've borrowed a couple of books from the library and will maybe tackle this today. This is the sandwich which still needs binding and now it needs ironing too:

new fabric = new dress

I bought this fabric yesterday in The Fabric Store.  It is crinkle cotton and made in India.  This is the stuff I saw before Christmas and thought it would be ideal for copying a dress I have as it's the same type of fabric.  It was on sale at 30% off so I got it for $12 per metre.  I got two and a half metres and some matching thread so all up, the dress should cost me $34 to make. That's not counting the man hours it will take me to make it, which will no doubt turn it into a thousand-dollar dress....oh, well.

Here's a picture of the new fabric:

And the existing dress I want to copy.

This is a French Connection dress I got in the sale and after the first couple of wears it was starting to look very fragile at the seams. The new fabric is the same stuff and quite delicate - I'll just have to be gentle with washing...

So I made a pattern yesterday - a piece for the sleeves, a piece for the body and another piece for the flouncy skirt trim at the bottom.  I'm sure there's another word for that but I've no idea what it is. This looks reasonably simple to recreate but it has been difficult to get exact measurements from the original without taking it all apart.  I've made my pattern based on the assumption that the body is a plain rectangle with cut outs to make the armholes.  The sleeves and shoulders are rectangles with cut outs for the armholes and the skirt trim is another rectangle gathered at the join with the body part.  It then takes its shape by adding elastic at the neckline and a belt at the waist. Sounds too easy. Let's see shall we.....

It worked!  The finished dress: