Off-centre: A modern baby girl quilt

Maybe even too modern?

What do you think? It is off-centre, has lots of negative space, wonky squares and linear and free-motion quilting.

I regret using a contrasting white Aurifil for the quilting. It works well within the white frames but I think I should have chosen a blending thread for quilting the negative space.

The back is more little-girl-ish: Anne Kelle’s Kites on flannel surprisingly matched well with most of the scraps I used within the wonky squares.

Of course it showcases the baby’s name.

I chose raw-edge appliqué again but changed the width often to match the width of the letters/strokes (does that make sense? You can see the width difference in the photo above).

So, all in all, what do you think? Too modern for a new born? Too much grey?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Happy quilting everyone!
Christine

An old friend revisited

Remember this sweet baby quilt? I made it years ago and was never able to let it go (aka give it away). But I finally found a home for it – my sister’s third baby received it for his christening.

I had to go back to fix it before wrapping and gifting, though. Back then I chose a zigzag stitch that was too narrow for the raw-edge appliqué. So the fabric began to fray after the first wash. Duh.

So I added another MUCH wider zigzag stitch to stop the fraying…

… and I added the little boys name, too. Thankfully my sister and my BIL chose another short name – very sewist-friendly (o;

Here’s a full view of the fixed version. One hardly recognizes the added stitches from a distance, does one?

I am happy I was finally able to let it go. Because that’s what quilts are meant for, aren’t they? To bring joy and comfort to someone we love.

Happy quilting!
Christine

Oh Deer! Epic Fail.

This is an unusual blog post about a baby quilt that I made for my newborn niece (my first niece!). I devided a jelly roll of Momo’s Oh Deer! into boy-ish and girl-ish prints and used the majority of girl-ish prints for a stacked strips pattern. Everything went well until it reached quilt-top-stage.

Then I wanted to appliqué the name and things started to get out of control.

Just so you know: doublecheck the direction of the letters before you fuse them to the background and before raw-edge-appliquéing them )o:

Maybe a hint that I chose the wrong font?!

I chose a piece of flannel and a left-over piece of batting that was just big enough and started quilting pebbles. Within the 2,5” strips I simply outlined the seams of every other strip.

Several thread breakes made quilting tough and enervating.

The binding was made from a mixture of white fabrics and leftover strips.

When I finished quilting and binding, I popped the quilt in the washer like I do with all newly-made quilts.

This is the mess that came out of the washer together with the quilt. And another big ball of fibres came out of the dryer afterwards. It turns out the batting was a leftover from the other bearding quilt.

This phenomenon is known als “bearding”. The fibres of the batting penetrade the fabrics on both sides (top and backing). The more fibres you pull out the worse it gets.

I am so angry with whoever produced the batting (I threw away the packing before I finished the first bearding quilt) and I am angry with myself: I should have thrown away ALL the leftover batting pieces that I had when the batting ruined the first quilt.

I was so disappointed with the result that I even forgot to take a photo of the finished quilt before I gave it to my sister. I contemplated throwing it away but decided it could be used as a wall hanging, seeing it had hangers at the back.

I sincerely hope this will never ever happen to you!
Happy Quilting
Christine

Elmer baby boy quilt

Our friends had their first baby in November and when I asked her what kind of quilt she’d liked to have for the baby she said: “Elmer”.

Well. So much the better! I always wanted to make a solids-only version of Elmer! Et voilà:

He really looks like the original from the book:

Above you can see Elmer fused to the background and here he comes “unassembled”:

Then I had to wait for the baby to be born because I wanted to include the name. They named the little boy “Valentin” and this is me during one of our MQG sew-ins:

 

Can you beleive I acutally embroidered the name?! Me, who hates handstitching?! But as I told you, every name has a “hidden” font. Valentin called for handembroidery.

For the back I chose a simple patchwork of kona cotton solids from various charm packs.

The free motion quilting was once again done with Aurifil thread in light grey. Dogwood design almost all over, I only omitted the elephant.

Instead of using the striped multicolour binding I used in the original Elmer Quilt, I chose a rainbow of solids:

Once again finished with a triple zig zag stitch.

And here you can see him ready to be cuddled and loved:

I somehow feel that this is not the last Elmer Quilt I made… They are just too much fun to make!

Dare to be different!
Christine

A new habit and a gift

Last year in London I took Trudi’s Class “Free Motion Quilting”. In her workshop we learned to doodle with pen on paper.

During the last exhausting weeks I was often too tired to sew but I discoverd that doodling or drawing a bit would “bring my mind down” as well.

So I thought I’d doodle a bit daily. Well, it turned out that DAILY was out of the question but OCCASIONALLY was fine (o;

This is one of my doodles that one could quilt coherently (I can see a baby quilt!):

Then I found this book in a shop:

…and started drawing rather than doodling… because I liked those organic designs and some grasses, feathers and ferns could easily become quilting designs:

  

On instagram we created a hashtag for everyone who wish to doodle along: #showyourdoodles

  

And then something awesome happend: Claudia (machenundtun) saw my doodles on instagram and send me this:

Two awesome booklets about zentangling. I immediately tried some of the designs and got hooked (my birthday is next week and I put more zentangling books on my wishlist).

Those Zentangling books are great, they both provide general information about the materials and the technique. The first one (Basics) is more thorough on this topic. If I got it right, each new book introduces new designs and shows further possibilities to use your finished zentangles (on postcards, bookmarkers, gifttags, etc.) The book encourages us to just do it without overthinking things to much. To just keep going and accepting that some tangles are great while others are … well… not so great.

This is what I tangled before our holiday trip - to be honest, these are the slightly greater ones (o;

  

I took a sketchbook and sharpie with me and started more doodles and tangles during our vacation (the sun is yet unfinished):

  

Thank you so much, Claudia, for those great booklets. Zentangling is a great way to do something creative while doing something else (talking on the phone, listening to an audiobook, watching after the kids, attending a dull meeting at work (don’t tell my boss!), etc.). It is calming me down and I also have the feeling that I did something to train my hand and my brain for free motion quilting. I will surely continue to doodle and if you don’t mind, I will share some tangles and doodles here.

Are you on instagram? Then come and #showyourdoodles! We would love to see your tangles and doodles and drawings!

Happy doodling and tangling!
Christine

A Baby Boy Patchwork Quilt

My youngest sister had her first baby in February. A sweet little boy. They named him Oskar and you’ll never guess what I made for him…

Ta da…

A rather soft-toned little patchwork quilt with his appliqued name. (Well, how DID you know it was a quilt?!)

I chose the striped background to make it look like the name was written on lined paper. I raw edge appliqued the letters and outlined them with black Aurifil in a rather careless, wonky way. I like the effect so much that I will surely come back to this method often.

I free-motion quilted the patchwork part with dogwood quilting, one of my favourite quilting designs ever. As there are much more light fabrics, I used a white 50 wt. Aurifil so the thread blends well with most fabrics and just adds texture. The striped part was fmq using straight lines within the white stripes (see photo above).

And the same light striped fabric was used for the binding. If I knew where I bought it or what it name was I’d buy some more, I really grew fond of this versatile fabric! For the backing I used a dark grey fabric with white and green butterflies that I’ve had in my stash for ages.

And then I tried something new. When my husband gave me this sewing machine for christmas 2012, it came with an automatic embroidery module. I never tried it because I never wanted to sacrifice the little spare time I have for reading the manual.

Then I decided that Oskar’s Quilt needed a proper label and eventually I read the manual and installed the hoop. I could not make it work. I read the manual multiple times but the hoop did not move. After spending two hours muttering and swearing I called the Pfaff Dealer in complete desperation.

It turned out that I only forgot to remove a little transport securing plastic device. Stupid me. After 2,5 hours I made it work:

In the end I was so happy with this little label that I am sure I will make many more (Now that the darn plasting thingy is gone…)

Now guess what happend?! Little Oskar likes his quilt! See??

Isn’t he cute as pie? And he is sooooo “well behaved”! He sleeps well, he eats (or rather drinks) well, he seldom cries (and only with a low voice). He is such a handsome litte baby boy!

Thank you, dear brother-in-law for that lovely photo! And thanks for your permission to use it on my wee little blog (o:

Happy Quilting!
Christine

P.S. As you can see from the label, I made this quilt in january. The baby was born at the beginning of february. It “only” took me 2,5 months to write a blogpost. Guess how much sewing has been done during the last 4 months? Nearly nothing. My daytime job is so exhausting at the moment.

I so long for more time (and energy!) to sew. Even on the occasional afternoons off (when the boys are visiting friends or grandma), I can’t gather enough energy to sew. I am tired all the time. I can’t count the evenings when I headed downstairs for my sewing room, turned on the lights, looked at my WIPs and turned the lights off again.

Does this happen to you sometimes? How do you get over it? Is there a tried and proven method?

A group quilt

Today I want to share a group quilt we made for our first “Modern Quilt Guild Bielefeld Baby”.

We knew that our guild member and New-Mom-to-be  was expecting a girl but does not like too much pink and rose. So we picked a grey background and decided on wonky star blocks. Each of us made 2 or three blocks and I volunteered to put the quilt top together and baste, quilt and bind the quilt.

Here’s our baby girl quilt for little Leona:

I used a variegated red-pink Aurifil to free motion quilt stars and loops…

…and outlined the stars using a white Aurifil thread.

All stars are scrappy and some are multi-coloured and others are monochromatic.

I found a fabric with little stars in colourful circles for the backing and used a multi-colour-striped fabric for the binding.

Below you can see the baby’s name quilted in the top left corner for some extra little individuality.

During our last sew-in the little baby came along for the first time. Below you can see a snap shot of her on Brigitte’s arm with her new quilt. She was such a cute addition to our party. Napping in her pram or being carried around by other quilt members.

You are most welcome to cheer us up with your little smiles and “uh-ohs” and we hope to see you again soon, little Leona!

So this was a long kept secret (we started sewing in October, I think) and I am glad I was able to finish the quilt just in time for her first visit.

Do you have a go-to baby-quilt pattern? I have to start another baby quilt soon, so if you know a good pattern, I’d love to read your advice!

Happy (secret) sewing!
Christine