A-Z Challenge: Q is for...

Who knew a post about polygamy would be so interesting to people, it is very strange to have seen it and been so close to it all of these years.  I enjoy the polygamy shows- Big Love and Sister Wives too, and probably wouldn't pay them any attention had I not ever lived here.  In both of those cases I have no problem with how those particular families are structured because they are all legal and willing adults choosing that for their lifestyle.  Another good read that talks about the foundations of fundamentalism is Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer.

Anyway, on with Q and a total change of direction as it is for QUILT.  I am a hobby quilter and have made several.  I made one for each of my seven nieces and nephews, and completed one for my son.  If you want to see some of them you can click on the label "quilt" in my sidebar and it will show you those posts. 

Now that I am expecting my baby girl I have been thinking about what I want to do for her quilt and am wanting to get on it soon since with Austin's I started it while pregnant, but didn't finish it until he was just about three.  It's a twin sized quilt and he uses it now on his big boy bed, so it worked out okay that it took me so long after all.  I want to do something kind of similar to Austin's but not as much hand work.  His quilt has 12 squares with farm theme motifs appliqued and hand embroidered around the applique.  It took me for ever to do the embroidery, so I want to cut back on that part.

On Pinterest I have been pinning away and came up with this for the general layout:

Source: quilting.about.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I do like the Sunbonnet Sue motif, and Austin's quilt has an Overall Sam block, but they are appliqued and take forever, so I am going to substitues some of the squares for traditional quilt blocks.  I'm thinking of leaving the three blocks down the center as Sunbonnet Sue blocks.  Then the top two and bottom two will be quilt block hearts:

Source: mccallsquilting.com via Sarah on Pinterest

or:

Source: quilting.about.com via Sarah on Pinterest

The 6 outer side squares will be flowers on top and bottom, with a basket in the middle:

Source: alamodefabric.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Source: compuquilt.com via Sarah on Pinterest

The other four blocks around the middle will be bows and butterflies:

Source: quilting.about.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Source: pleasant-home.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Source: artfire.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Or:

Source: fussycutter.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I was hoping to go shopping yesterday after my doctor appointment, but just ran out of time with my other errands.  I am thinking of varying the colors more, instead of the browns I'm thinking of going with purple to contrast the pink, but we will see when I actually look at what they have. 

The Quilt is Done!

I finished up Austin's quilt last week.  It is so nice to have that finished after working on it for soooo long!

I put it on one of our full sized beds, so as you can see it's going to be big on a twin, and about right to a little small for a full.  I'm not sure why the batting I bought that said it was "twin" sized was so big, I even cut several inches off the sides.

For the back I chose red handkerchiefs.  Since the front was all earthy tones I wanted something bright, yet masculine.   It was a tiny bit short so I sewed on a 4" band of the brown which is also the binding fabric.  The hand binding took forever, it's such a boring phase of the process.

The label

Quilt top

Now that I am in the sewing phase things are moving a lot faster.  I got the majority of the quilt top done, so I wanted to share.  I still need to put the lighter green around the perimeter and then the binding will eventually be the brown fabric after the quilting is done.  I have decided that I want it to be done so I am going to machine quilt it.  I considered hand quilting, but all my looms are at my Mom's, and it takes a long time too.  

The dimensions on it are huge.  I bought "twin" sized batting that has the dimensions of 72" x 90".  So far the quilt top as shown is 64"x 86".  I put it over our full bed and it covers the top completely already so add on the outside edge and binding and this size will cover a full size bed and it will look huge on a twin bed.

11 and 12= on to sewing/quilting

I finished the embroidery of last two quilt pieces, drum roll please:

The coloration of the photos is pretty wild to me, the top left pumpkin does not have that much thread color variation when you look at it.  I did run out of the darker pinkish orange thread and substituted with the lighter.

Overall Sam style (like Sunbonnet Sue)

The sewing of the sashings has commenced, but I think I will hold off on photos until I have the quilt top done.  I still have not figured out what to do with the back, I could put some of the leftover sashing pieces together, but I might do something totally different too.  At one point I was looking at Joann.com and found a cool multi-colored gingham, but I did not order it at the time and now I can't find it again. 

10 of 12

This one took me a while because there was so much embroidery work on it.  I still need to iron on the last two, but I am getting closer!

I am self designing each of the squares based off of coloring sheets.  Here is the coloring sheet I used to pattern this piece:

Pieces 8 and 9

One plus side to being sick last week is I did get some more work done on Austin's quilt pieces.  Here are pieces 8 and 9:

I also re-did the cow a little bit since I thought his original  tail looked funny and his face wasn't detailed enough.  I am not using any patterns, I have been taking coloring book pages and photocopy them to enlarge/reduce them to the size I want and then cut them out to trace them.  Sometimes it takes a little trial and error with this process.



7 of 12

I just finished up this piece.  I have 3 more pieces ironed, a horse, an ear of corn, and a sheep.  I have the pieces picked out for the next and it will be a pumpkin patch.  I need to dig back through my craft tubs because I have misplaced the 12th blue square.  My sewing room is also our office and second spare bedroom, so I always have to put my sewing away and apparently tucked the last piece in the wrong place.  I'm still undecided on the 12th piece, I'm think maybe a farmer, or a chicken.

Half way there!

I finished piece 6 of 12.  I have one more piece already ironed that I am embroidering, and then I need to cut the pieces for the other 5.  I am still debating on what to include, so far I have a barn, cow, pig, apple trees, sun, combine, and tractor.  I am thinking about an ear of corn, a pumpkin, a horse, a chicken, and maybe a farmer.  Do you have any other good ideas for a farm theme?

Butterfly quilt

I pulled out my old cd's that I backed up folders on to try and find the photos I want to include in my 21 Days of Summer Challenge for day 7.  In the mean time I am finding a bunch of fun old photos.  Here is one of the other quilts I did for my niece.

Wordless Wednesday

Piece 5 out of 12 done!

Progress

Since around Christmas I have resolved to stop playing so much on Facebook and work more on my hobbies, especially Austin’s quilt.  So I am pleased to announce and share that I have made quite a bit of progress since the new year.
In the past I have made quilts for all 7 of my nephews and nieces.  I tried to find photos of all of them, but they were all pre-digital photography, so I had to go through my old box of photos in the closet and only came up with two of them.  If I find the others I will post them later.

 

The first one is RJ’s with a “Sun Bonnet Sue” design with applique dolls and center flower.  The second is JB’s and had appliqued trains.  JA’s quilt I did at the same time so his is also appliqued trains.  JC’s was first and it was embroidered zoo animal motifs and I hand quilted it.  JP’s was embroidered Disney characters and I got them from a coloring book.  AE’s was an appliqued butterfly quilt and JD’s was an appliqued farm scene.  The last six were all machine quilted.

Here is the pattern I am using for Austin’s quilt:



It will have all farm theme pieces.  Here are the ones I have finished appliqueing and I am hand embroidering around each one.






I have not pieced together any of the quilt pieces, but I laid them out so you can see the Earth tone colors that I chose:



My next square I have appliqued and will start embroidering it and it’s a cow.  I will also do a tractor, combine, sheep, and some sort of crop representation.