Giraffe & Moon Baby Quilt

Hello, hello!

Well this post is looong overdue.  To be honest, it's sat in my drafts box for so long that I actually forgot that it existed.  So I think it's time to release it unto the world.

Now, the reason as to why I've waited so long to share this post is because I've been waiting on some photos of the completed project.  However, any one of you out there who has had a baby under the age of a year will know that taking photos of a baby quilt and sending them to your friend is likely to be as far down on your priority list as this blog post ultimately became, and I really can't blame the parents (my friends) for that.  So, despite my hope of showing off this little quilt with its infant owner, I have some non-baby-featuring photos to share instead.

I keep thinking of this quilt as the cow that jumped over the moon but strangely, these are giraffes, not cows.  I'm willing to argue that it could still pass with the nursery rhyme title, though.

Giraffes & Moon Baby Quilt

Giraffes & Moon Baby Quilt

This adorable quilt was bought as a kit in the States and given to friends (as a kit) for their baby shower, with the promise that it would magically turn into a quilt by the time the baby was born.  It features soft cottons, flannels and super cosy chenille fabrics, although I discovered just how frustrating chenille can be to quilt on, as it has a tendency to snap the quilting thread.  The Heat n'Bond piecing for the characters helped everything come together quickly and easily, with just a wee bit of block piecing afterwards.

Moon & Meander Quilting

Giraffe & Hand Blanket Stitching

The blanket stitching is done by hand and the rest of the sewing and quilting were done by machine.  A combination of traditional straight and free motion meander quilting were used with a variegated blue cotton quilt thread.

The project came together very quickly with two people working on it together.  Needless to say, the parents were thrilled and baby Max loves his quilt.

Harmonic Convergence

OMG, I finally finished one of my long-overdue UFO projects!  It's amazing to see what you can get done with the right tools for the job (thanks, Janome!).

Back in 2011, some friends and I had a sewing day together and we whipped up these Ricky Tims harmonic convergence wallhanging tops:

Four years on and after a lot of bother replacing border fabric I wasn't happy with, and this project is now complete and ready to hang.

Once again, we are having terrible summer weather so my apologies for the poor lighting - lack of sun does that...  Sigh.  But it still looks great, I say.

Here's a peak at the backing fabric, which co-ordinated with the prints from the top.  You can also see the large meander quilting here.

And here is the rest of the quilting.  You can see that I did in fact brave trace quilting all of those little mugs - there were 60 of them, by the way.  And I did freakishly well going around them, too, might I add (for a beginner).  And that loopy doodle quilting line is still my absolute favourite - too cute!

I even managed to get the hanging sash on the back to look cute with all the little mugs lined up.  That was a total fluke - there just happened to be a perfect size of leftover material cut from the border print that worked out but when the quilting gods hand you something this perfect, you need to take advantage of it, I reckon.

Mmmm, binding...  I love binding.  It's possibly my favourite part of any quilt project, which I should now be able to enjoy more often, since I have a machine that will allow me to completely finish projects.  Yeah!

Free Motion Quilting

Hello again!

I seem to keep gushing about so many new and exciting (to me) things lately, and I'm going to share another with you today.  Having recently finished my Red Velvet layer cake quilt top, I'd been feeling a little gun shy at the prospects of starting quilting.  But I finally knuckled down and put together some small practise squares, beginning with some meander/stipple quilting and then doing some border doodle designs.

I managed to get my Ricky Tims harmonic convergence wallhanging spray basted without the help of Greta (cat) and then I was good to go!  I decided on a medium-sized meander in the central base of the wallhanging so as to catch all of those seams and to soften the harsh straight lines.

I used a turquoise thread with good contrast against the different fabrics, which was a tip I picked up from one of the FMQ resources I've been trolling recently in preparation for this next step - it definitely helped me to see where I had already sewn, which was a huge help and very useful.  I also really like the look of contrast threads so that made for an added bonus.

In the inner border, I decided on this cute doodle line - I love how playful and whimsical it looks.

Now my next step is trying to decide what to do for the quilting in the outer borders, which feature little hanging mugs.  I would love to trace quilt around each of the mugs, but my FMQ isn't very precis quite yet (although if I do all of them, I'm sure it will improve rapidly!)

And finally, I was looking around for some quilting glove options.  I haven't seen any actual marketed quilting gloves in my area but I did notice this neat gardening gloves at my local grocery store:

They're cotton with a textured rubber on the palms and fingers and man do they grip the fabric!  And the best part, they were a mere 20:kr SEK ($3.00 CAD) - sweet!