Baby Owl Quilt

 

Baby Owl Quilt





Here’s another baby quilt that I’ve made for a friend of mine who has had a bub, and there will be plenty more baby quilts to come…as more and more family and friends are having babies! I only hope that I can keep up! As I’m studying full time, have my own very hyper little guy to chase around and am looking for part time or casual work that suits my already hectic life.  As much as I’d love to sit and quilt all day, every day… I don’t have that opportunity. Maybe if I could get some more followers for this blog, or started making some money from this blog I could justify it?

 

The feature squares came all cut up and ready to go in the form of a Charm Pack called Ten Little Things by Moda.  I purchased these at the Craft and Stiches Expo I attended in March 2013. I used most of the squares in the charm pack.

I’m not a fan of the rickrack edges to the pre-cut squares. So other than the other pre-cut quilt that I’ve already purchased (and will hopefully feature soon as its own blog post) I won’t be purchasing anymore. It just becomes a little trickier to make sure that the seam allowance is even, and can throw out the look of the quilt.

This quilt measures 37in x 43.5in or 95cms x 111cms. I’ve used cotton wadding which was purchased pre-cut and bagged at Spotlight. Love that stuff!!

For the boarders on the quilt top I’ve used a dark navy blue homespun, which I wasn’t too sure of when I first laid out the squares. I actually thought that it might be too dark. But it seems to make the squares ‘pop’. So I didn’t end up changing it.

 

For the backing fabric I’ve used an aqua blue/green homespun fabric. Which now I wish I’d gotten more of, as it really is a lovely shade and my pictures just don’t do it justice!! For the edging or the binding I’ve used a dark navy and white polka dot print, which I had just enough left over from when I made my brother a Man sized French Braid quilt. The navy and polka dot print was the backing fabric on his quilt.  

 The threads that I used for this were the same variegated threads that I used for my own Hectic Eclectic Quilt. For the top of the quilt it was the various blues variegated thread and for the backing it was the blue, green and yellow variegated thread. I’m lucky that I had enough left over to quilt this quilt too! Quilting is all about recycling they say…so I’m glad that I can actually find the odd project here and there where I can reuse the same threads and fabrics. Also it saves me from having to run out and try to find something that will go with the quilt that I’m trying to make. Especially when I’ve already taken longer than I would like to make the quilt!

 

 

I’ve machine quilted this in the stripling style, and even though I’m pretty new to machine quilting I think that it turned out pretty good.  

My new scrappy cot quilt

My New Scrappy Cot Quilt

 

My poor crafty blog has suffered a bit the last year from lack of action. It wasn’t that I wasn’t constantly thinking of blogging or crafting…I was.  Let’s just call it ‘technical issues’ and leave it at that, or this could very well end up being yet another rant blog.

 

Anyways let me show you what I have been up to…

 

Once in a while I’ll spot such a beautiful quilt that I do something that I know I probably shouldn’t…I ditch all my other current UFOs (In this case it stands for Un Finished Objects) and start to make yet another quilt.

 

This time I feel totally justified in doing so, as this quilt was so much fun to make and it truly is striking! In fact I’m already thinking about making a double bed sized version of this quilt. This version is a cot size; it measures 96cm x 132 cm or 37.5 inches x 52 inches.
 

 

This beautiful cot quilt is inspired by ‘The Original Ticker Tape’ pgs. 138-141 from the book ‘Sunday Morning Quilts’ by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkinson.

 

With this quilt the ‘quilt sandwich’ is made first. I used my favourite quilting spray and basted my quilt. For the top of the quilt I used white homespun fabric.  The wadding is cotton, which was purchased pre-cut to cot size. While the backing fabric is vintage cotton Australian wildflowers print.

 I started working on the quilt top by laying out scraps of fabric to see how it looked, then when I was happy with the layout I pinned the scraps to the top of the quilt.  During this process I actually ended up causing myself a few nasty needle stick injuries from the pins. So I took the time to unpin them all and re pin them with safety pins instead. What I would recommend for anyone else that attempts this style of quilt in the future is to just use safety pins from the start.
 

 

The scraps are sewn on by rotating the quilt around the needle with the needle down in the work. So the scraps are designed to fray with wear, which will over time give the quilt a rustic look and feel.

 This is a great way to use up odd scraps of fabric. There’s an array of beautiful scraps that are from my previous projects, while most are left overs from other’s fabric stashes from when I first started to get interested in quilting and they were kind enough to send some unneeded fabrics my way.

 

The backing is a vintage Australian Floral Print, which has featured in my first Papillion Quilt. But being such lovely fabric I wanted to keep it uncut, so I’m excited to use it as the backing for this project.

 This quilt is up for sale on my madeit.com.au store which is called Netto. I’m hoping to complete some more quilts that I can add to my store over the next few months.

 

At this stage my store items are only available in Australia. However if you see something that you just lurve, let me know and I will investigate the postage and customs restrictions for your country to ensure that your quilt will reach you.

 I hope to show you another quilted project next month.