Cats and Dogs - Part 7

I have been working on the paper pieced cats and dogs quilt for one of the members of our small quilt group. This is where we drew a name of one of the members of our group and are making a quilt for that member. Initially everyone made a set of paper pieced cats and dogs that we traded back in September so that every quilt will have a cat and dog from each member. Then each person can add more cats and dogs, and or other items to the quilt. We need to get the quilt top finished for our meeting at the beginning of March to reveal to the person that we picked.

I did make a few more batik cats and dogs to add to my quilt top and here is the layout so far. Now you may be wondering what is going in the blank spots in the top left hand corner, the middle and the bottom right hand corner. Well I decided to take on my own personal challenge and I'm paper piecing something that is more specific for the person that I picked. The problem is I can't show you right now because it will become obvious who I'm make this quilt for by what I'm paper piecing so it will have to remain a secret until the quilt top is revealed on March 8th. Some of the gals do drop by the blog and see what I'm up to so unfortunately it will have to remain a secret until then.

Scrappy Valentines

This Monday the small quilt group that I belong to, Quilters Pets, is making heart blocks for Valentines Day. There was a paper pieced method and a template method for doing these blocks. Given that you have to deal with bias cut fabric if you are going to use a template, I decided to go with paper piecing.

The look is suppose to be scrappy in that each of the red fabrics is suppose to be a different red, with the top 2 red sections and bottom 2 red sections being a darker red and the middle 2 red sections being a medium red. I had a few reds in my stash but had to go out and buy some more. The biggest problem was finding medium red fabric. When you look at fabric on the bolt in large sections it can look different than when that same fabric is only a 2 or 3 inch square piece in a block. So after a couple of shopping trips this was the best that I had and I wasn't in the mood to go out again to find more red fabric.

Below was my first block that I had made before I realized that each red fabric had to be different and sent me out shopping for more fabric. So by the third shopping trip and the colours still weren't quite what I had in mind, I decided that they would just have to do.

These just might become part of a charity quilt. If anyone is interested in the paper pieced pattern, this is it. Please note that the finished block size is 8" so when you go to print this pattern out you will need to print it to larger paper (11" X 17") so that you can get the 1/4" seam allowances around the perimeter in. They are not drawn in on this pattern.

Art and Cold Cash - Part 4

After reviewing the quilting with Jack Butler on this piece, he decided that he wanted to add some Inuit script in the borders at the upper left and right hand sides.  I have now finished that and this is being handed over to Bernice this weekend for the beading.  Once that is completed, there may be either some additional quilting or perhaps some hand quilting / embroidery to finish the piece. 

Below are some detailed images of the additional quilting.

The goal is to have this completed by the spring.  Time will tell given that this is a collaborate piece and requires the time of multiple people and coordination between everyone.

BOM Drunkard Path Variations - January Block

I signed up for a BOM called Drunkard Path Variations that is being run by Kerstin http://kesquilts.blogspot.com/ .  I only got my templates for these block this past week and with work being rather busy I had to leave this to the last weekend in January.  I'm very please with how it turned out for a first timer at curved piecing.  I must say it has been a learning experience. I had to get a smaller sized rotary cutter and that made things a lot easier in the cutting department. Sewing the curves was interesting but lots of pins made it easier. The directions said to use 5 pins well I think I was using like 9 pins :-). Here is my finished block.
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Below are the fabrics that I'm planning on using for this project. The Kaufman fusion fabric will be in each of the block (top). The fabric that is on the far left is the backing.  The 6 batiks that are resting one on top of another will appear in 2 of the 12 blocks each.  The one on the bottom is the one I used in today's block.  The darker batik that is along the bottom will likely be a sashing but that may change once all the blocks are completed.

Baby Quilt Animal Party - Part 3

I finished the baby quilt today.  Since all that I had to do was the binding I typically can work on that at night when I don't need the best of light.  I'm pleased with how it turned out despite the difficulty with the way the panel was printed.  I did send an e-mail to the manufacturer Kaufman and I did get an e-mail that they received my e-mail and were looking into the matter.  That was over a week ago and I haven't heard anything since so I suspect I won't hear back as to what happened that caused the panel to be printed that it was off grain by 1 1/2" between the top and bottom.

I'm still working on the Art & Cold Cash project and should have that completed for next weekend just in time for the other gal to take it and start the beading.  Since that involves free motion quilting on a very dark indigo hand dyed fabric I find I'm best to work on that in the day light hours.

Baby Quilt Animal Party - Part 2

I finished the quilting on the Animal Party quilt today. It was a simple grid quilting that I did on this quilt. I started out with a 6" grid in aqua coloured thread using a saddle stitch. This stitch is a more defined stitch than a normal straight stitch in that the needle goes back and forth while creating it. Then I created a second grid in a mango coloured thread that was 1 1/4" to the right of the aqua grid lines. Finally a third gird in grass green thread that was 1 3/4" to the left of the aqua grid lines.

One thing that I learned about the saddle stitch, at least with my machine, is that you can't go fast while doing it, or it tries to revert back to an almost normal straight stitch. I think what it is, is when the speed of the machine is too fast, it doesn't have enough time to go back and forth properly. I had to go back and redo a couple of the aqua rows of stitching because they were not well defined.

Here is a close up of one of the blocks and you can see what the grid looks like. The other nice thing about doing this grid pattern is that I locked the stitching at the beginning and end so I don't have to sit there and tie off and feed all the ends through the inside of the quilt. All the ends are at the edge of the quilt which will be covered over with binding so that should protect the small ends that are left. This makes for a fairly quick way of getting a quilt quilted. The interest is added by using multiple colours of thread and a thicker stitch.

Here is what the back of the quilt looks like like. This fabric is so cute.

I would definitely use this method of quilting for any charity quilts I have to do or if I need to get something out on a tight dead line. So I just have to make up the binding and get that sewn on and the quilt is finished.

That will have to wait about a week or so since I have to get the last bit of quilting done on the Art & Cold Cash quilt http://felinesandfibrearts.blogspot.com/search/label/Art%20and%20Cold%20Cash because the gal who is going to be doing the beading on it will be ready to take it in a couple of weeks.

Baby Quilt Animal Party - part 1

I'm making another baby quilt and for the most part I'm a believer of keeping things easy and simple when it comes to baby quilts. Typically they are used and abused, so I don't feel like spending hundreds of hours of my time making them, but still want to make something to celebrate the birth of a friends' child. Also the quilt is for the child so they should be able to use it while they are growing up instead of it being folded up in some drawer for safe keeping because there was too much work put into it.

I like using panels since usually all it means is sewing on a border and you are ready to quilt. I saw the new line of kids fabrics from Robert Kaufman called Animal Party and really liked the nice bright colours and cute animals on the panel they had. I figured this would be another simple quilt to make until the fabric arrived in the mail.

As you can see from the picture above of the panel print it is based on a wonky log cabin idea. But when I got my panel, not only were the blocks in the panel wonky, the whole panel was wonky. At first I was cursing the fabric shop that I had ordered my fabric from for cutting the panel crooked. So I laid out the panel on the table to see what I could do with it and took a couple of my large cutting rulers to see just how off things were. This is when I actually noticed that the panel was printed crooked in relation to the weave of the fabric and there was no way to cut the panel so it would be on grain. Usually Kaufman fabrics are really of good quality so I'm not sure what happened with this lot.

So I decided to cut out each of the blocks from the panel and add an additional strip of fabric around each block as you would in a wonky log cabin and then square the final block. I had bought some small circle fabric for an inner border and for some reason I bought 1 yard instead on my normal 1/2 yard that I would for an inner border for this type of quilt. Thus I had enough fabric to create proper squared blocks.

I'm now in the process of quilting this. I'm keeping that very simple on this one. I'm doing a grid of 6" squares of straight line quilting in an aqua thread but I'm using a thicker stitch called a saddle stitch to give it a bit more emphasis. Then I'm going to quilt with a mango coloured thread another grid that is 1 1/4" to one side of the aqua grid and finally a third grid of a grass green thread that is about 2" to the other side of the aqua grid.