Another UFO finished

Another UFO finished yesterday and I have just photographed it so I can link with Clare of Maybush Studio blog for her Brit Sewing Thursday Linky.

I made this Peter Rabbit quilt top in Feb/March 2010 when I was stuck in the house recovering from the Norovirus and a chest infection.  I felt awful and sad that I couldn't be with my daughter helping with our baby granddaughter who had just been born.

To help ease the frustration I made a few quilt tops, raiding my stash, especially my scraps.
This Peter Rabbit quilt top was one of the tops I made. 
A friend saw it and asked if I could make something similar for her niece's baby.  I did and finished that really quickly and  off it went to America where it is hung on the wall of the baby's room.    Apparently it was deemed too nice to use, it was an heirloom, hence pride of place on the wall!  Still there although that baby is now a three year old  little girl.

But my original top was put away and not finished.

Fast forward to a few months ago when it came to light again whilst I was sorting out my sewing room and it was put into a big plastic box of UFOs.  About three weeks ago it was this quilt top's turn to be finished.  I used a piece of backing fabric I had bought on sale for half price and hand quilted it in the ditch.

Yesterday I added a lovely pink binding, just the colour of strawberry ice cream.  I bought this fabric at the Festival of Quilts and I think it finishes the quilt nicely.

The fabric is called Cherry on Top by Keiki for moda and is made in Japan.  It has a lovely soft feel to it and was an ideal choice for the binding.

So, a drum roll for another finished UFO!

The front:

 

A close up showing the log cabin blocks:

Showing the backing and binding:

I fussy cut Peter Rabbit motifs for the centres of the log cabins and used strips cut from my scraps in pink, blue, yellow and green which were the main colours of the motifs.
The quilt was hand quilted in the ditch using a cream quilting thread and finished at 36" x 36".

 

In the pipeline

A friend gave me a strip of cartoon-style frogs, ideal for a baby/child quilt. There were 11 blocks on the strip, each measuring 3.5" square so just right to make the centre of a Log cabin block.

The frog blocks are bright primary colours and orange so I hunted out scraps of orange, yellow/cream, green and blue to make the logs.  When I made my two Peter Rabbit Log Cabin quilts I used the colours in rounds: pink, yellow, green and blue, alternating the order of the colour frames for each block.

Like this:

However, when I started to make the Frog Log Cabin blocks I don't think I was really concentrating (blame the hot weather!) and  I used the four colours in turn for each round of the log cabins.  By the time I had made all 9 blocks I really wasn't keen on them, they looked too busy and haphazard and I felt the logs rather detracted from the cute frog centres.
But I had trimmed the blocks on each round so didn't want to waste the fabric or my time unpicking.
So, I persevered and decided that aqua Kona Cotton might tone things down a little so I cut 2" sashing strips.  As soon as I started joining the blocks and then the rows with the sashing in between the blocks suddenly started to look much calmer and much better! Magic.

Yesterday I completed the sashing and made a narrowish aqua border around the whole quilt, again using 2" strips of my Kona Cotton.

At that point I stood back and decided the quilt needed two more borders, a bright scrappy one and a final aqua one. I raided my stash of 2.5" cut squares ( which I cut when I have suitable small scraps, one day perhaps making a Scrap Vomit Quilt?) and made the four scrap borders. 

So here we are, My Frog Quilt 'In the pipeline', ready for it's final 3" aqua border.

 

 

And a Close up of the blocks, sashing and scrappy border:

 

I still think I prefer the way I did the Log Cabin blocks for my Peter Rabbit Quilt but, as this Frog Quilt has evolved, I find I can live with it and will be happy to finish it and gift it at sometime in the future.  Two more babies due in the Autumn, and if one is a boy, then this is the quilt I will give as a present.

I do find it interesting how my ideas change as I work through the process of making a quilt. 
I set off with fairly clear intentions as to the colours and main design ( Log Cabin, Strips, Stars etc) and then as the quilt grows I find colours I thought would work well, especially for sashing, don't really pass muster, and I change my idea and colours.

This happened in my last quilt the QAYG Strip blocks when I changed my idea of aqua sashing to the yellow and again in this current project, adding two extra borders, including the scrappy squares one.

Do tell me if the same happens when you make quilts! 

 

Owl Quilt Sneaky Peak

One of my daughter's friends asked if I could make a quilt for her 2 year old's bed. Bethany's bedroom curtains had an Owl motif and I was sent 2 fat quarters to incorporate into a quilt which was to be 40" deep and 55" wide, to go across the bottom of Bethany's bed. Two bright fabrics with really cute owls!

So, how to use them?  After much deliberation I decided to use a fusable webbing on the back of the circular owls and applique them onto spotted fabrics which matched some of the colours in the owls; lilac, blue and a soft green. I hand blanket stitched around the owl shapes.

Then I cut the other fabric into sections of owls sitting on branches. These formed the centres of a log cabin style block.  Again I used the lilac, blue and soft green fabrics but to add a bit more zing I framed some with a Michael Miller Ta Da spot in red and an Amy Butler spot in a mustard shade of yellow.  I had great fun arranging the blocks into 5 rows of equal length, adding extra strips of spotted fabrics to make the blocks and rows uniform.

Once the top was machined together I sandwiched ready for hand quilting, using the lilac spot fabric as backing. I have now almost completed the hand quilting but I have taken a few photos to email to Bethany's Mum so she can see how the quilt is progressing.  I am really pleased with how it is turning out and I hope my customer is too!

And here is a close up of some of the blocks.

A lot of work involved but I have enjoyed it!