Mikey Monkey - aka Kinnick

Siley boy's 1st birthday present -- a Mikey Monkey.

Orange Peel Quilt Progress

I finally had some time today to sit down and work on Libby's orange peel quilt. I've been dilly-dallying around with the prep work, so I pushed through and finished getting all the peels and fusible interfacing prepped. I traced the peel pattern 21 times on each of the remaining 10 fabrics (I already did two of them before) and did a rough cut around each peel. Then I cut 42 - 5 1/2" strips of interfacing. Now I will be able to sew the interfacing and peels together, flip them, iron them and voila...peels with fusible interfacing. This will make life much easier when I go to blanket stitch around the peels because I will be able to iron them onto the white backing blocks and they will stay in place. I also did not want to have raw edges on the peels, so sewing them together with the fusible interfacing solves that issue as well. 


Here is my original design with all the fabric calculations:

All the peels are traced and ready for interfacing:

I finished a few more peels after the prep work was done. I probably have about 54 peels done now. Here's a preview of what the quilt will eventually end up looking like:

Tomorrow more peels will be completed...

Libby's Orange Peel Quilt Fabrics

Tasha, Josh and family moved into a new house in January and have turned Libby's room into a princess castle -- what a girly-girl my niece is turning out to be (good thing there is still time for her to outgrow it)! Tasha asked me to make a quilt to match her window seat and curtains (that the best Oma in the world made). Here is Libby in her princess castle...

Tasha sent me a swatch of fabric from the window seat so I could match fabrics for the quilt. After trips to four different fabric shops, I came up with this collection of fabrics. The green/limey-yellow were the hardest to match. They were just a little different hue than most normal greens and yellows, but I think I did OK overall and the quilt won't be immediately next to the window fabric, so it'll look fine (I just have to keep telling myself that). It's a bright, cheery bunch of fabric, I really love the combination of colors!

I am going to make an orange peel quilt, which is an applique quilt. Here's an example of an orange peel quilt...

I have started making some of the peels already. It will be a lengthy process as this is going to be a twin size quilt and I need to make 252 peels. I am about 21 peels in...

Hourglass Quilt Finished

It took two sittings to free-motion quilt this small baby quilt. I had to stop out of frustration when I was about three-quarters finished because the backing kept bunching. It was hard to catch when it happened, so I would notice after I finished a section and then I had to pick out a bunch of stitches and re-connect the stippling lines. It was extremely annoying. I managed to finish the quilting today without much more bunching. I think next time I'll start in the middle of the quilt and work out to the sides. Most people don't think this is necessary for free-motion quilting, but I think it would help resolve some of my bunching issues. Anyway, it was a fun technique to use and I'll use it again, but probably only on small quilts. After washing, the stippling creates nice texture, but I really like straight line quilting for the simplicity of it. Anyway, here are a few more pictures:

Lime green backing! The quilt lines show up better on the solid fabric, but in my case, maybe that's not something to post a picture of. Most people recommend using the same color thread for the top and bottom because getting the tension just right is difficult with free-motion quilting. However, when people say you should do something because it's easier, I always choose the hard way, so I used green thread on the bottom and white thread on the top. It turned out just fine -- and not much of either color showed up on the wrong side, so I will continue to match my threads to the fabric, even if they are different!

 Close up of the stippling.

 

 Folded up and ready to be sent off!