Fiber Babble: Why I Always Wash My Quilts...

Why I Always Wash My Quilts...

August 06, 2008

* I'm taking just a brief break from the last lines. This is thanks to L, who referred to my last post as "the peeing on a stick" post. Heh.

... or, "Why I Don't Usually Do Large Appliqué Projects"

Puppy-butt is such a good little helper.

This quilt is unnamed so far. It stated with a pre-kitted (by me) set of strips cut and clipped to a magazine. I grabbed it on the way out the door to one of the Woodland quilt get-togethers. I think I was maybe 3 logs into the project and the whining began. I really, really don't like making log cabin blocks. I love the look of them, but they bore me to tears. (Yes, I'm sure I've said that about a zillion times now, but there's no other way to say it.)

I was able to finish the log cabin blocks (16 of 'em) by using them as my leaders/enders project. Then I found some farm animals for the big blank light areas (the magazine project had long been abandoned by that time). After that, I figured some appliqué in the border - the gals in Woodland helped me come up with Sunflowers.

I thought about designing my own sunflowers, but I happen to have a friend who does some pretty spiffy applique patterns, so I jetted on over to Fat Cat Patterns to see what Sindy had to offer. Fortunately, I frequently start at the bottom of lists, so the first place I clicked was on her Placemats page - and lo and behold, sunflowers!

Have you ever used any of Sindy's patterns? SO cool. I guess it's been awhile, but all those pieces for the sunflowers were laid out on the page so that the like colors (like all the greens for the leaves) were all together. I could just trace the whole darned page straight onto the fusible and not have to pick out the pieces from all over the place when I go to iron them onto the fabric. Go have a look at the pattern, I think you'll see what I mean. (She's so clever!)

I thought I was going to do sunflowers 'hugging' each corner (and I've traced, fused and cut out all of those little pieces FOUR times!), but I'm wondering if it will be overkill. Now I'm leaning toward using 2 corners' worth of sunflowers on opposite corners (like in the first picture) and extending down or up along the sides. I can quilt more sunflowers in the border if I want to continue it all around.

And about the redwork? This is just the first layer. I really have to make the red bolder (I started with a dark red). Maybe an orange-y red, definitely a wider stitch. All of the animals are done by machine; just a different flavor of machine quilting... uh, without the quilt part.

Oh! Clever idea! Necessity, the Mother of Invention! All those itty pieces of sunflowers? Held down for transport from the bed to the machine by Glad Wrap Press 'N Seal! SO cool - I could actually fold up the quilt with all 60 or so pieces on it and take it into the other room.

This was going to be made into a pattern for a swap that I'm doing, but I don't know that someone else will want to go through all of the logs AND the redwork AND the zillion-piece appliqué. (I'm having a thought right now about a curvy border/binding, too...) I might go with something else for my swap partner and just treat this as a one-time thing.

Labels: quilting