I have 3 baby quilts to make for nieces and nephews, but before I could start, I had to finished 2 charity quilts I committed to do this summer. One was for my guild to donate to a local nursing home and the other was for a guild member who is traveling to Africa with a quilt tour group this fall. They are bringing quilts for the babies, so I promised I would donate one for the trip.
Well, I am sure I am like most quilters on 2 accounts. One, I usually work in similar colors and two, I save all the odd left over pieces from quilts I make. So I was fortunate enough to look in my scrap basket and find some treasure. Earlier this year I made two quilts for nieces, both with purple as the main color. Since both also used turquoise, I was able to pull enough scraps with coordinating colors from the basket to make both tops.... talk about pay-day.
The first was real easy, as I had quite a few left over squares from one of the quilts, where I just didn't like some of the colors or fabrics for the look I was trying to acheive.... but since I took them all out whole, they came together to make the quilt for the African orphanage....
Nice bright colors, where strip sets and squares made a nice 46"x42" baby blanket. It has almost a scrappy feel but still cohesive :-). For the quilting, I just did a continuous line design, joining swirls and leaves. It has been such a long time since I quilted large graceful work, I had a hard time getting into the groove. My rhythm kept wantingto take me back to my small intricate quilting of late. But, I managed and am happy I was able to finally free motion quilt with my Superior Rainbows thread. I just lowered the top tension to .5 and the stitch length to 1.0 and off I went! No snagging, breaking or spit up on the back, like I had been experiencing with the Rainbow thread. I guess practice and learning your machine, really does pay off :-).
I then took the left over purple and turquoise strips and half square triangle blocks and put them together with Kona Black for the second top.
This piece measures 42" square and they mustn't be any larger. as this is safe size for use with a wheelchair. Otherwise, it can get caught up in the wheels of the wheel chair...
The top came together really quickly. I did some free motion feathers in the black sashing and 6 other designs in the 'blocks'. I decided to practice doing quite a bit of my filler patterns on this piece, except making them about 10 times larger. I decided to practice doing quite a bit of my filler patterns on this piece, just making them about 10 times larger. It was interesting seeing which filler worked or was easy to do on a bigger scale, and which ones didn't. I will let you be the judge, but here is the one I like the best....
I realy enjoy what I call 'leaves on leaves'. I love the way you can change directions and they look as if they were layered one on top of each other.
I used the same Superior Rainbow thread in this piece. Again using Bottom Line in the bottom, with a 90/14 Sharp needle.
All ran smooth as can be. Just have to do the piping, which I do by hand, usually as I travel up and down the road. Now I can get started on the 3 baby quilts that are joining the clan this fall :-).
The first will be drum themed. I just have to design it first :-)...
Nite....
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