March 28, 2010 of 365 : cottontail bunny made by claire milne
This was actually a really sad day for me. My Uncle Pat had passed away very early in the morning, surrounded by many of my family members in the hospital. I went to Quilt Sunday for some crafty comfort and dear Claire gave me this darling bunny gift. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I’ve named her, ‘Cottontail’, from one of my favourite stories, “Peter Rabbit”. Her tail is actually felted wool, but I think this is okay. Thank you, Claire! This bunny is very special to me.
Claire will be at the Spring Trunk Show this Sunday. Cross your fingers that she’ll be bringing some more bunny friends!
I’ve been wanting to show you this quilt for a few weeks, but wanted to make sure that it got shipped off to baby Chloe in Vancouver before posting the photos here. This is just the second quilt that I’ve ever finished. Can you believe it? I feel like I’ve got about a dozen quilts in progress and I keep starting more!
This quilt has undergone a quite a few changes since I started it a year and a half ago. When I took the Presto Nine Patch class, I thought the technique was so fun that I should make a queen-sized quilt. I think this is a particular ’syndrome’ of new quilters. You want to make every quilt a bed-sized quilt. It’s incredible how much the more work, exponentially, it is to make a huge bed sized quilt. I am now quite happy to make large lap-sized quilts. Baby quilts are a breeze in comparison. I had discovered my abandoned quilt blocks and thought I would motivate myself for the Crafty Slacker’s contest that Toronto Craft Alert had, but I didn’t do much more than post about my abandoned project at the time.
Little Chloe was born a few months ago and I was inspired to give her a baby quilt in the colours of my childhood – pink & green. My first bedroom as a child was decorated in homemade decor all coordinating in pink and green. I loved the colour scheme and still have a soft spot for those colours.
I made the nine patch blocks smaller than what we did in class and then framed them with matching strips. I used a Kona solid in soft pink as sashing between the blocks. For the back, I used some scrappy bits. I especially love the green camouflage which contrasts the sweet girlie-ness in a nice way. I was able to put the front and back of the quilt rather quickly. I machine quilted by stitching in the ditch around and in the blocks using a variegated thread.
Then, I stalled when it came to doing a label – for a couple months. I was not too happy with the label I did on my first quilt. I had used embroidery thread and tried to free hand the embroidery, both were mistakes. I finally got up the courage to try doing this new label. I pre-drew the writing on my piece fabric and used the same variegated sewing thread that I had for my quilting lines. I’m happy with how it turned out. Variegated thread makes everything better.
For the binding I was inspired after seeing a scrappy binding the Karen W. was working on at a recent Quilt Sunday. It’s such a cute detail.
Before I packaged it up to mail it to the west coast, I washed and dried it to get the lovely puckered look. It is so satisfying to finish a quilt and then wash it! It is also extremely satisfying to hear that Chloe is enjoying the quilt as both a blanket and play mat and hopefully it will become infused with all her memories of growing up.
This weekend was Quilt Sunday and I had a mission to get my Queen-sized quilt basted. Of course, I enlisted the help of the workroom’s quilt master, Johanna. How lucky am I to have a quilt master to call upon in times like these?
Basting is the crucial step before proceeding to quilting all the layers of a quilt together. Basting a huge quilt is no easy task and my quilt was even larger than the workroom’s largest cutting table. We positioned the quilt back face up and with the sides edges on the table and the ends hanging off. The sides were taped down with masking tape to hold the backing taut. A large piece of cotton batting was laid on top and carefully smoothed out. The quilt top was layered next with the face up and then we started pinning. Curved basting pins are the best to use for this and we used a LOT of them. Over 950 curved basting pins placed approximately every four inches. The edges were thread basted, as a final step. Basting is important because it keeps the three layers (quilt top, batting, quilt back) from shifting as you do your quilting. I’m planning on hand quilting this mammoth quilt. I’m just going to be doing vertical lines of stitching, evenly spaced. Sounds easy enough. I have no idea how long that part will take me, but I’ll be reporting on my progress.
I have a couple fun projects on the go that are keeping me busy (busier than usual), but I’ll be done them soon and of course sharing them with you.
NOTES: I realize that not everyone out there is into quilting, so some of this talk can be confusing. Here are a few brief definitions if you’re trying to follow along:
PATCHWORK or PIECED WORK: Sewing together pieces of fabric into a larger design.
BASTING: Sewing with long loose stitches to hold material together. When basting a quilt, this is the step once you have all three layers of your quilt ready to put together. Basting can be done with thread, curved basting pins or a combination of both.
QUILTING: Sewing through two or more layers of material to attach them together, after you have basted them. This can be done on a sewing machine, longarm quilting system or by hand. The quilting can be done in a pattern or follow the patchwork lines.
Quilt Sunday definitely got my engines revved for figuring out the back of my queen sized quilt. I had a vague idea of something ‘piecy’, using yellow as an accent to greys and grey blues. I drew a sketch and thought I would just be spontaneous and not calculate anything. When I took out my pile of fabrics to get going, I was overwhelmed and afraid.
Jacqueline has been planning her quilts on the computer and the thought of having some actual measurements to go by seemed very reassuring (and practical). I opened up Photoshop and created a file that was the size of my quilt (90″ x 108″). Then I started making boxes and shading them with the colour tones I’ve been thinking of. Once I was happy with the look, I checked to see what the final size of each box was and ‘voila’! some simple quilt math was accomplished without injury.
You’ll notice that the design is very loosely based on a log cabin block. I really love the look of the log cabin and one day I hope to do a whole log cabin quilt. One day very far away from now.
I’m going to try not to fret too much more about the details, the fabrics or the design and just whip it up as quickly as possible. I think there’s something to be said for being spontaneous in quilting. Though that might seem impossible when working on a project of such magnitude and time.
Something very exciting seems to be happening out there, I can feel it in the air … people are wanting to quilt. As a ‘quilt shop’ owner, this is especially exciting. Mostly because from my vantage point I can witness the birth of these creations from the first selections of fabric. Then weeks, months later I get to see the amazing finished results.
I am far from being a quilter myself. I have yet to complete one quilt. Perhaps this seems a bit crazy to you, but when I was planning the workroom, I was planning a place where I could teach you the things that I know and where you would teach me the things that you know. I have known for a long time that quilting was something that I wanted to learn and I hoped it was something that you wanted to learn too.
Claire has been talking about starting her next quilt. Her blue and white quilt was a joy to watch come together. Anabela is planning her first quilt as a wedding gift and picking out fabrics and a pattern. Quilt Sunday is coming up this weekend and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s work in progress and new projects.
With all this, I suddenly realized that I actually finished my queen-sized quilt top during the summer, but forgot about it! I pulled it out this morning, ironed it and took some photographs. I love the way it turned out. It’s so fun to see how all the blocks that I spent so long agonizing over came together. Now that quilting season seems to be starting up, I’m going to get going on doing a simple pieced back. I’d like to spend the winter hand quilting this while I watch Gossip Girl. (and I’d like to start working on another quilt, of course.)
