Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Quilt Files, Episode 19

So I'd gotten into the pattern of making a baby quilt whenever someone was expecting, and I planned to revisit one of my favorite patterns when a cousin announced she was expecting baby #2. As I was planning the quilt, I began to think about baby #1, who was born before I started quilting. Her sibling was getting a quilt; her twin cousins already had quilts; why should she be denied a quilt just because she was born first?

She was five or six at the time, so I figured I could make a nice lap quilt, in pretty girl colors, from some of the fabric in my stash. (I might have bought a couple of fat quarters, but I think I mostly used stash fabrics.) As a bonus, I would put something pretty and girly on it ... and you don't get much more girly than fairies! I found some images in Microsoft ClipArt, blew them up big, and then used them to create appliques, which I basted on to the base and then attached with a satin stitch around the edges. I finished by quilting concentrically around the fairies, using the center one for my main circle and putting smaller circles around the corner fairies. I think it turned out nicely. The little girl in me certainly thought it was pretty pretty pretty!

Sometimes I have just as much fun putting together the back of a quilt. I had found this gorgeous pink and purple batik that looked almost like it had been tie-dyed. I used it for the borders and one set of squares of the top, and had this lovely big piece for the center of the back. I took the remainders of the other seven fabrics and stripped them together. It's pretty, too, and in this view you can get a better idea of how the circular quilting turned out.

I'm particularly fond of this piece; not just because I love the colors (although they are my favorites), but because I designed the whole thing myself and managed to create recognizable fairies even though I can't draw worth crap.

1 comment:

  1. That's gorgeous. I'm so glad you take pictures of your work, because I'd never see some of them otherwise (like this one). You work too effeciently or I don't visit often enough, or both. Sometimes I just go back and read all your quilt files. Should I be doing my quilt instead? Nah.

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