Tag Archives: quilting with kids

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After finishing her first quilt, Rainbow Swift 2, my daughter decided that she would make a doll quilt as a gift for a friend. I think she was inspired by the fact that my son's second quilt, Rainbow Swift, was a doll quilt that he made to her.

While on our family vacations to Portland and Southern California this summer, she chose some fabric to start her own stash. For this project, she picked solely from her stash. Her first choice was to use the cat fabric for the backing. Then she chose the "stripes" of fabric for the front of her quilt.

She opted for simple lines of quilting (similar to her brother's quilting on Rainbow Swift, but going perpendicular to the stripes of fabric) and wanted to add the quilting of her handprint like we did on her first quilt. I traced her hand and free motion quilted that part.

She hand wrote her label. (First name removed in pic.)

I keep remnant binding pieces to use on small projects and for scrappy bindings. She initially chose two pieces of binding from my remnants, but when I was making additional purple binding for my own project I offered to make enough extra purple so hers would be all one fabric and she liked that option. Last weekend we were finally able to finish up the quilt by attaching the binding. Now to deliver it to Ellie!

Thank you for visiting!

Linking up to the Q4 Finishes Link-Up. See my Q4 list here.

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Most of the past week was spent stitching my block and preparing my post for the New Block Hop I participated in this week. If you haven't checked out those posts, we have some amazingly talented participants with some really awesome blocks. (Links to day one posts and to the hosts can be found in my last post.) Beyond that, everything has been about preparing to quilt a number of quilts. That number happens to be five.

The Quilts

  1. I helped my daughter baste her doll quilt. She's getting very excited to give her gift. Here's the front view and a peek at the backing/label. I love that she's named it Striped Quilt.
  2. I have a secret project that is basted and ready for some straight line quilting. No pics.
  3. The race car quilt is basted and ready to quilt. I'm going for some Jess inspired free motion on that one. 
  4. My sister and brother-in-law requested another quilt for my baby nephew to play on so I'll be finishing up Star Light Star Dark for them. I've chosen backing (see below) and binding fabrics for this one, and made the label. (Edited: I'm linking up to the Star Light Star Dark Final Linky Party with my finished quilt top.)
  5. I hope to crank out a fast finish on a Very Hungry Caterpillar baby quilt to deliver this weekend. It's all ready to baste. I love that it's small enough to not need a pieced backing. The label is above. 

Now I'm hoping for some great sewjo and a few really productive days of quilting. Fingers crossed.

 

A Little Bit About My Quilting Process

I start by working on my hardwood floor to baste, using blue tape to tape down only my backing fabric. I pin baste. I like to use Clover Flower Head Pins and Pinmoors. I am very generous with the number of pins I use, pinning every 3-4" to avoid shifting. Generally, I put all the pins in, remove the tape and then sit in a comfortable seat while I put on the Pinmoors. (I love how fast and easy they are to remove during quilting.) I use Quilter's Dream cotton batting exclusively. My quilts usually stay in California, and it doesn't get that cold here. My preferred batting weight is Select. I use both walking foot and free motion quilting, all done on my domestic machine, which has a 7" throat (the space to the right of the needle). The largest quilt I think I've quilted on it to date is Bold Blooms, which is 65" x 83". Our king-sized bed quilt is the one quilt I've sent out to a long arm quilter. (I just wanted it done!) I use a closed toe darning foot for free motion quilting, but wish I had an open toe darning foot. I think that's about it. Let me know if I missed anything you'd like to know about!

Thanks for visiting!

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Some weeks I look back on what I accomplished and I am surprised that I did so much. This is one of those weeks. Kids being back in school and a mostly unscheduled long weekend led to a lot of sewing progress for me.

 

Mysterious Things

Last Thursday the first sewing instructions came out for the Meadow Mystery quilt, by Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs. I managed to finish up my cutting that day, but I haven't yet started the piecing. I have all month to get it done and still be on track, so I've been working on some other projects first. Instagram and Facebook are filled with beautiful versions of the first blocks.

 

Things I Put in the Mail

Yesterday, on the sixth day of the month, I shipped all my bee blocks for the month! This is unheard of. I sent two for my Do. Good Stitches group and one for Shirley in my Bee Hive swarm. Plus the two bonus blocks that I showed you on Monday for my friend Mary. It's so nice to have the monthly commitment already checked off. Sometimes I get them sewn early in the month, but then I usually don't manage to get them out the door until the end of the month.

 

Kid Things

My daughter is making progress on her second quilt. Just like my son's second project, she chose to make a doll quilt. Her's is for a friend. I love that she has been coming into the sewing room to play with her fabric, neatly arranging it on the floor. Over the weekend, I consulted with her on her plan and cut her strips of fabric for her. She pieced them with supervision from me and is so proud that she finished her quilt top in one day. ;-) She raided my remnant binding box to choose something for her quilt and settled on a purple, with a scrappy low volume white to go with it since the purple piece isn't big enough for the entire quilt. She's pinned the purple up on the design wall with her quilt top. (In the first picture you can see a peek of the kitty fabric she's chosen for the backing.)

 

Slow Stitching Things

I get up at 5:30am now. I'm just over a week into this new routine. It means I go to bed at 9:30pm sharp these days, but the kids don't get up until 7:00am so I get a fair amount of time to myself in the mornings. I am not inherently a morning person, but I think this is working. Over the weekend I kept up my schedule, since I figure that's easier than sleeping in on some days. This meant even more time to myself since nobody else in the house had anything to get up early for. I've used this time in a variety of ways, but I spent one of those weekend mornings making progress on my La Passacaglia project. I was halfway through connecting the pentagons, and I finished that step and attached them to the center section. 20 pieces down, 70 to go in this first rosette. Now I need to prep a bunch of itty bitty triangles to make the ten stars that go around this section.

 

Things I Can't Really Show You

Secret sewing is exciting, but it's so hard not to share. Luckily, I have a few friends who I can text pictures to when I'm itching to share but can't post publicly yet. The first project is a quilt that I've finished the top for. I'll be able to show it off once I've given the gift. The second secret project is my Nine-Patch Challenge quilt for Quilt Con that I've finished drafting in Illustrator (with Daisy's help). I've actually designed two versions. I think I'll piece the easier one first and then I'll decide if I want to try to tackle the harder one. My next steps on this project include deciding what colors I want to use and  how to go about piecing the trickier parts.

 

Things That Are Colorful

I love color and I find inspirations in a variety of places. This week presented two color palettes that stood out to me. First, as I'm working on chipping away at pre-washing and putting away my summer fabric acquisitions I stumbled across this palette of solids that reminds me of a vibrant sunset. I have some improv piecing in mind for these lovelies.

My second palette came from a more surprising location, my dishwasher. I opened the dishwasher to find these colorful cups in a line in this order. Deciding I liked them well enough to keep the colors in mind for a future project, I snapped a quick picture. (Don't you just love that awesome 80's tile!?)

These palettes are both particularly interesting to me, because I generally gravitate to the cool colors. I'll have to finish a bunch of other projects before I can dive into these, but I'm keeping them in mind for when I "need" a new project.

Thank you for visiting! I'm linking up to Midweek Makers, Let's Bee Social and Needle and Thread Thursday.