Well, I’ve made two baby quilts in the past two months, and designed a third (someone else did the hard work of putting it together). We presented two of them yesterday, so I can finally post pictures. The third will go up after May 3rd.
This is the one I designed, but didn’t piece or quilt. The information given to me was “blue and green.” That’s it, so I had to use my own judgment. The feeling I was going for was old flannel shirts, that manly, home-spun look. The block used was “Bird in Air.” The lady who made this one, bless her poor little fingers, did it entirely by hand. Which for me–a mainly machine-quilter just barely dipping her toes in hand-quilting–is a big deal.
The quilt on the right is one very special to me, and I am so pleased how well it turned out. One of my dearest friends adopted Hope from China. Since the adoption process takes a while, I had plenty of time to chew over the design of the quilt. Her theme was butterflies, in pink, purple, and pale green. The girl is my own design, the blocks a simple four-patch.
It also marks a turning point in my quilting adventures–I was forced to hand-quilt the thing. I tried to shove the monster under my poor little Lily, and it looked terrible. So I hauled out needle and thread. At first I was just going to do the figure, but she turned out so nice that I continued hand-quilting on the diagonal through the purple squares. As that went so smoothly, I thought I’d try doing the binding by hand too. OMG! I have never had a binding turn out so nice and smooth. That hooked me. The next quilt I did (the one I’ll post next month) was also machine-pieced, but hand-quilted, and it too turned out beautifully.
My foray into the world of hand-stitching has taught me two things already. One, a sharp needle is a happy needle. Two, the thimble is my friend.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Sewing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.