Rainbows and Hearts

A friend recently asked me to make a baby quilt for a friend of hers.
The theme was rainbows. Well, I have experience making rainbow quilts. That's about all I've done the past few years.

For Example:

Rainbow Quilt for Goose 2011

Rainbow Quilt 2011

The Rainbow Quilt for Goose in 2011 was the pattern I used for Rainbow 2017.

Quilt for E, 2012

Quilt for Big Girl Goose 2014

Big Brother Quilt 2011

Final Quilt. I revised the pattern, turning it into a perfect square, rather than the original rectangle. I also removed the sashes and changed the color pattern.

Pieced backing, I like pieced backings. They feel like two quilts in one. Plus, for a baby quilt,
well, they WILL get puked on. So more pattern to hide stains is a must.

Brain storming in my sketch book.

Final Colors

Final colors and pattern. Note, it changed from here to square.

Cutting and piecing

Four blocks pieced. There was so much bias edging
that I used knit stay tape. That way much less stretching
during sewing.

Fun stuff you guys. Wish I had this in
college. 

I thought a pieced heart would be cute.
But I'm glad I didn't do it. 

Better

Best

So close you guys

Just a little appliqué

Piecing the back. I didn't have enough fabric in a pattern
for the backing, so a pieced backing was the way to go.
Plus, this is a baby quilt, and babies puke.  Several patterns
can disguise stains.

Stretching the quilt before safety-pin basting

One thing I forgot, this quilt was mostly sewn
on bias. So it stretched a lot. 

When started to quilt, well, it would pucker a lot.

I re-sewed my appliqué about four times.

Because of the puckering that happened with my
sewing, (I used a high loft batting to make it super squishy)
I had to do some re-sewing to remove a lot of loft
from the heart circle. Which led to some weird stretching.

The backing. 

This was a fun project. I'm thinking I might make a PDF pattern available on my Etsy. So if someone wanted to make a rainbow quilt, they could.

Till next project.

,Ruth

projects for November

I've had a few projects I've accomplished this November.

I created a design wall with foam board insulation, batting and flannel. No more crawling around on the floor laying out my quilt pieces. I have been planning on this for years now. But there was never any space on any walls.

Design wall and mini minky blanket

It's not permanent, it's lightweight so I'll be moving it around whenever I get my office/studio in a better layout. 

In the meantime it sports some quilt pieces, and some of my kids artwork. Just wrap the foam board ($15.00 a piece of 4'x8'x3/4") with some quilt batting and cover that with flannel. The quilt pieces stick onto the flannel with no pinning.  The only issue I had with making this is that using duct-tape doesn't work that well, It just pulls off the paper backing and falls off the batting and flannel. The staple gun works slightly better but they pull out of the foam core pretty easily. 

I also recovered my hand me down office chair. It had holes in the upholstery, and the stuffing was starting to show through. So I found some fabric from my stash and with my handy staple gun re-covered it. It was left-over plaid from when I made a kilt. It was a fairly easy project till I had to re-upholster the back of the lumbar support. I ended up sewing it onto the chair which in hindsight was a lot of work when I could have just glued it on. (I didn't want to have visible staples on the back)

After.

I don't have a before photo because I'm just not that good a blogger. Just imagine it looking crappier and red. That's the before. 

I finished up a double sided minky blanket for my niece for x-mas. Minky sure feels nice but like all high pile fabrics it's heavy and unruly to sew. When I shook out the fabric to lay it out on the floor and cut it to the right dimensions, a huge puff of minky hairs just exploded all over my living room floor. My daughter didn't mind, she just wrapped herself up in the fabric and named it her "baba".

 When I took it away from her to sew she cried big fat tears and beat her tiny fist agains my studio door. The fit she threw at Hobby Lobby when I bought it was pretty epic as well. Lets just say that after it was cut from the bolt of fabric she draped herself in it and gave anyone who tried to touch it dirty looks. Since I had some leftover minky fabric I made her a tiny lopsided blanket. It's up there in the picture of the design wall. Just scroll up guys I'm not posting the same picture again. Gosh....

I didn't take a picture of the huge minky all laid out in it's glory because honestly draping the blanket on cute stuff and taking thousands of badly lit pictures was just too hard today. 

There you go, it's all finished and packaged up.

That's my other desk chair. It's the one in-front of my computer. It's made from bungee cords and is super bouncy!!! I love it too. 

Well, I've gotta go pick up the kids. Sorry for the typo's, lately my fingers are too frozen to type correctly. I should have kept those fingerless usb heated gloves. Oh well.

Rudy