Saturday, February 24, 2018

A Doll Like Me Finish

Last week (see this post) I showed my process of making a doll quilt improv style.  Not my comfort zone.    I'm a symmetrical kind of person usually.  I am making this quilt for Bernie's (of Needle & Foot) event called Share the Love.  Details about that are also in my last week's post

So this week was spent basting, quilting and binding.  Here is the finished quilt.


I knew this would be a perfect time to practice my feathers.  I've only done them one other time and wasn't thrilled with them.  First I got out the paper and pen to practice.  I particularly like the method used by Lauren at Bold Notion quilting show in this YouTube video.


Even after practicing, I forgot what I had intended to do.  As you can see in this doodle, the feathers both start at the spot away from the corner on each leg.  On the quilt itself, I didn't do it that way.  I quilted one side of the feather all the way around the entire quilt and then the other side all the way around.  It took me a while to figure out why the quilting didn't look like my doodle (which I like better).  But all in all, it's ok and its still better than my first try.  I also need more practice on the traveling part.  I'm too impatient and need to slow down and try to stay on the line better.

I used a pink tone on tone for the back. 

Also, this week I finished a block for the lone Stash Bee I am in this year.  Whew!  So much better than doing three.  I learned my lesson last year.  Here is Ann's requested block for February.


Today,  I am meeting up with a friend about an unfinished quilt made by her great grandmother.  So we'll be talking about that next post!  I'm looking forward to it and am hoping we can solicit some advice for her about how to proceed from all of you experienced quilters out there.  

That's it for this week!  Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
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Sunday, February 18, 2018

Improv Day 1

I certainly didn't start the day out thinking I would be making something totally improv, but that is exactly what happened!   There I was just sewing along on a project (that I can't share yet) when I got tired of that and started playing with scraps.

Last July I won a box of scraps from Myra at Busy Hands Quilts.  Her scraps are so much more interesting than mine!  I started with this 5 inch scrap . . .

Added some leftover binding Myra used on something. 
And now we have this . . .

I love this yellow and blue floral.  Does anybody recognize it and know what line it is from?  I'm not really very creative, I just keep adding fabric in rounds.  Next round was this . . .

Then I didn't know what to do next and my eye was caught by some other scraps and I started sewing those together . . .   The pieces with black in them were exactly those sizes and the lighter floral was in a long strip so I cut up the long strip for a kind log cabin effect.  LOVE these colors!   

I just noticed that there are pink flowers all in a row.  I should have flipped those around a little bit more.  Oh well.  Moving on . . .

This was a random block I sewed together after something else had to be trimmed while making one of my bee blocks.  I've had it for a while.  I figured it would get used somewhere . . .

I added an extra strip to one side of the pink and gray block so it would fit up against the log cabin . . .  Starting to look more improvy and not so symmetrical.

Now that those two sections are sewn together, I added another low volume strip with gray in it to the bottom of this piece.

OK, back to the scrap heap!  I found three rows of little squares already sewn together so I just made them into a 9-patch.  I didn't get the corners matched up the greatest, but that's ok.  Close enough!

I had some pretty gray scraps with touches of turquoise so I took those and just wrapped them around three sides of the 9-patch . . .  I was trying to sew with the scraps as I found them and not cut them up too much.

Now I'm going to put these two sections together . . . except the log cabin section isn't quite long enough to go with the other one so I sewed a few crumbs together and added them to the right side to make it long enough . . .

Now here they are all together!   I'm loving these colors!


And last but not least Myra's lovely scrap box had some AWESOME fabric (I think maybe Amy Butler?) to put a perfect border around this to make a doll quilt.

There is a fun story behind this doll quilt.   I get most of my blog notifications via e-mail and I was getting way behind on reading them.  So I decided I was just going to delete all the e-mails I hadn't read yet so I could be caught up.  There were 100 or so that were going to be deleted.  For some reason, and I can't even remember why, I decided to click on this post from Bernie at Needle & Foot Fine Fabrics.  I think I was supposed to.

Thanks to Bernie, I learned about a wonderful lady named Amy Jandrisevits owner and creator of A Doll Like Me who makes dolls for children who might possibly be missing a limb or have some other unique characteristic about them and she makes dolls that look the the child.  Bernie had the idea to collect doll quilts to send to her that she could send to the child along with the doll she makes for them.  If you want to read in more detail about A Doll Like Me, please read Bernie's blog post and join in the event she was inspired to start called Share the Love, Quilting for Kids. 

So far, I've just got the top put together but it's basted and ready to quilt!  Maybe I'll have a finished quilt to show you in a few days.  What are you going to do with the first block you started making you ask?   I have no idea! It did kind of get abandoned, didn't it?  It possibly might be the base for another doll quilt!

I can't wait to see all the quilts that get made for this event.  There are already quite a few and you can view them on Instagram at #adolllikeme.  I'll be adding mine there soon!

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