It’s been a while! I have been waiting all week to take pictures, but by the time I get home, the sun has gone down or it has been raining. Inside it is.

This quilt is for a friend who is having a girl at the end of November. My first baby-sized quilt, and I LOVE how quickly this sews together (once I got over the agony of colour, pattern and placement… but I think I have quilt commitment issues since the combinations always seem endless).

    

I have to give a significant amount of credit to Emily… I think I had about 4 of the patterned fabrics in my stash, and she let me root through hers to find the best baby ones. The fabric donation, combined with my haphazard style of purchasing fabric, means that unfortunately I have no idea what collections any of them come from. Except the toucans and jungle prints; those are  Birch Organics – Safari Soiree, and the sashing is all Kona solids.

   

Like the other quilts, this was quilted with cotton batting on the long-arm machine, this time using a paper pantograph design. I chose little people outlines, … which I also forgot to write down the name of. Scatterbrain much? Both top and bottom are quilted with Bottom Line – Superior Threads. We have been having a couple tension issues with the machine, and find that there are fewer problems with this thinner thread. I do love the King Tut thread colours too, so just have to work out the kinks.

   

The backing is a flannel bought from Fabricland. To make the binding a little sturdier for longtime baby use, I sewed it on the back first, then machine-stitched it to the front instead of hand stitching, and it turned out pretty well.

In taking pictures, I accidentally got this black and white shot, which surprised me to see the quilt just by the colour value. You can see that the pink, blue, and green sashing are the same.

Well, one last look for me, and then wrap up the quilt so it gets there before the baby!

– Stéphanie

Made for a friend whose wardrobe has a definite slant towards flannel plaid, I wanted to represent the blend of colours to give some cozy comfort without actually using plaid. I drew up a pattern, making sure it was big enough so that I wouldn’t have to deal with itty bitty pieces. As it is, the yellow strip is only 1″ wide.

     

I used different fabrics, trying to match how the colours change when they overlap in a plaid pattern. The most difficult to find was where blue overlaps with yellow; I did not want to end up using a green, and was fortunate enough to find fabric that seemed to maintain distinct blue and yellow. I wanted a little bit of the back to show in the front, so chose the red as a binding (spoiler!).

    

It was quilted free-hand, attempting to emulate a wood-grain pattern. Sometimes they look more like waves, but for a first-time free-hand quilter, I’m not complaining. I was also listening to music and dancing while quilting so that probably contributed to the… waviness.

    In the big white squares between the plaid, I wanted something simple to keep the attention on the plaid. So I chose to do straight vertical and horizontal lines for three of them.

And a surprise for the fourth! Can you tell what it is?

You can see it better from the back….

    Surprise!

I wanted to make the back interesting, if not reversible. The moose is appliquéd on. It was the first thing quilted, and we had to be a little creative in how to roll the quilt onto the long-arm once that part was done. The rest of the back was quilted in a light grey so the wood-grain is a lot more obvious.

 

Hopefully next time there will be some in-progress photos, but for now just bear with my excess of finished pictures. I suppose once I have made a lot more quilts, I will be more blasé about it, but for now I am pleased as punch.

There have been mumblings of turning my scratched out plans into a real pattern in case anyone was interested, but that will be a while coming.

Thanks for reading!

Stéphanie

Je vous présente une courte-pointe que mon fils a faite l’été passé. Il n’avait que 11 ans quand il a accompli ce beau projet. Il a pris le patron “All About Me” et ma soeur Suzanne l’a modifié un peu pour lui. Il a choisi des tissus qui représentaient ses intérêts: sports, musique, nourriture… Suzanne lui a montré comment couper le tissu, le coudre ensemble, et piquer la courte-pointe. Il a tout fait tout seul!!! Comme il est perfectionniste, tout a été fait avec minutie. Nous sommes tellement fiers de lui et du travail qu’il a fait! Nous saluons aussi le courage qu’il a de faire une activité peu commune pour un garçon. Il a même eu la chance de la montrer à nul autre que Kaffe Fassett!
Vous remarquerez qu’il a mis des tissus représentant le fil, une machine à coudre, et évidemment les Canadiens de Montréal! L’arrière est fait d’un tissu éclatant plein de balles de tennis.

J’ai pensé m’essayer à faire une entrée à ce blog… J’ai finalement fini une courte-pointe sur laquelle je travaillais depuis très (trop!) longtemps pour mon fils.  C’est un fan fini de hockey, et surtout des Canadiens de Montréal.  J’avais acheté plusieurs tissus de hockey au Vermont Quilt Festival car il voulait une courte-pointe de sport et de hockey.  Et puis, j’ai trouvé un panneau représentant une patinoire sur l’InterNet!  Cela ne pouvait pas être plus parfait, il fallait que je l’incorpore dans mon projet.  Puisque le panneau était déjà assez grand pour couvrir une bonne partie d’une courte-pointe pour un lit simple, j’ai décidé de faire le tour assez simple, avec des bordures de différentes largeurs, toutes dans le thème bleu-blanc-rouge et hockey.  A l’arrière, j’ai mis des carrés de plusieurs différents tissus de hockey.  J’ai eu un petit pépin quand j’ai piqué la courte-pointe par contre.  Puisque je piquais des bandes, j’ai commencé à piquer les bandes à l’extérieur du projet, quand j’aurais dû commencer à piquer le centre et à progresser vers les bords du projet.  Le résultat est qu’à l’arrière, il y a plusieurs plis dans le tissu.  Le milieu est piqué avec du fil blanc qui brille dans le noir, à la demande de mon fils.
Il était tellement content quand il a vu la courte-pointe sur son lit en revenant de l’école le jour de sa fête!

Natalie

After Emily’s quilt for the Michael Miller challenge, I have but a small token to offer to the blog

When our church put on a garden show / baby quilt show and sale / afternoon tea in the beginning of July, I was excited.  I was not able to be there on that particular weekend but I could make a quilt. Suzanne very generously provided the fabric and the pattern “Friendship Quilt”. It was a very quick quilt to make. And of course, it meant that I got to practice on the long-arm machine again.

I do not have a name for this quilt, but going forward I will name them. This quilt seems lonely without a name

I used a kite pantograph to quilt it all together.

These are last minute pictures I took just before I gave it away to our church. I usually like to have things completed well ahead of time, but when it comes to quilting, can anyone get their quilt made in time to take good photographs?

Check out the binding. I was so lucky to find this striped fabric. 

I had much fun creating this quilt. I have offered it to our church to be either sold or given to a mom in need. I hope that some child enjoys it as much as I had fun making it.

Happy Quilting this Summer!

Michèle