A quilt for a special boy

I posted off this special quilt during the week.

A friend of mine has a little boy, a toddler, who is very sick and will be spending a lot of time in hospital in the next few months. I don't really want to go into any details, for privacy reasons, but as with so many other quilters, I felt compelled to make a quilt when I heard the situation. If you're a quilter too, you'll understand why. Comfort. Wrapping the recipient up (literally) in all the good wishes and positive thoughts that you want to express but don't quite know how. I wanted to do something concrete that might help, if even just a tiny bit.

I mulled over what type of pattern to make but it didn't take me long to make a decision. Elizabeth's Sliced Coins pattern has been on my list of "must makes" for quite a few years now, its one of the first quiltalongs I observed when I started reading quilting blogs, and I loved the quilts made in the quiltalong. Plus, it's easy and straightforward to make, but has a big impact, and I wanted a pattern which allowed the fabrics to shine, because my plan was to gather every novelty boy's fabric I could get  my hands on for this quilt. I wanted it to be something that he could sit and look at and explore. Something interesting and fun.

I have a (pretty depleted compared to a few years ago) stash of boys fabric myself, but not enough for what I wanted, and I knew I needed small enough quantities for the coins. So I asked some of the lovely ladies in the Modern Irish quilters group if they would mind swapping or selling me small quantities of any nice boys fabrics they had. Of course, they all came up trumps and put oceans of fabric in the post to me and refused to take anything in return. This gave me an absolutely fabulous selection of fabrics to work with. I really love the variety, the colour and the prints. There are cars, trucks, buses, diggers, planes, animals, birds, insects - everything you could possibly imagine that little boys are fascinated by. Thank you so much ladies, you know who you are and I couldn't have made this without your help.

I quilted it in a stipple but with lots of loopy loops and was happy enough with how it worked. There is lots and lots of white sashing which  Nicky suggested was perfect for driving dinky cars up and down and across, and I agree, it would work great as a playmat too.

For the back, I used some leftover coins to make another strip for the centre, then I used a couple of bright and happy Ikea prints to make up the rest.  As you know, I don't often piece a quilt back but it was worth the effort and I like how bright and happy it turned out. There is plenty of interest on the back as well as the front.

The binding was some blue poplin with little hearts. Perfect. I machine bound this, as I had a lot of other hand stitching to complete and I tried a different method than I have previously used which I liked, but would like to refine my technique on a little more.

I forgot to measure the finished quilt but I followed the pattern pretty closely and I know the finished size there was 54" x 57" so I assume its similar. It's a lovely generous quilt size for a toddler, equally perfect for bed at night as for snuggling on the sofa by day.

I hope that this quilt might provide some entertainment or comfort for my friend's little boy over the next few months, and that he gets lots of use out of it. Please God his treatment will go well.

This is my first finish from my FAL Q3 list also. Hopefully not my last.

Circles Quilt Finish

Almost exactly a year ago, I started the Polka Dot quilt from the Block Party book for my little boy Mr D.

And finally, after a very long journey, it is finished! I'm pleased to say that he absolutely loves it because there was a significant amount of energy and mental angst expended on this quilt. It has been used every day since I finished it and I even had a snuggle under it last night myself watching tv. I adjusted the block size slightly as I had a limited amount of the Ash fabric in my stash, but wound up with a great lap size quilt measuring 60" x 65"

This quilt definitely would be a great one for a Bee, as the process of making the appliqued circle blocks was fairly labour intensive, but not as satisfying as piecing blocks - so a whole quilt of them felt like a lot of work :-)

I used Kona Ash for the block background, and used the train and car prints from Ann Kelle's Ready, Set, Go as the focal fabrics - and the basis for the rest of the colour palette choices for the applique circles. The result is all those bright and vibrant fabrics in blues, greens, yellows, reds and oranges, from a combination of the novelty kids fabrics in my stash, plus some other lovely fabrics. Mr D helped me pick the fabrics, and had surprisingly strong opinions on which ones he liked and didn't like.

The sashing is a bright vibrant peacock blue that I found in my local fabric shop  and I like how it works with the Ash, it really brightens the quilt top


I even pieced the back which I rarely do - I used some more of the blue, a large strip of the train print from Ready, Set Go, and some Kona Charcoal which I adore.

After basting it (twice -more of anon!) I machine quilted wavy lines in the sashing to secure the blocks, and then I hand quilted around a number of the circles in each block using a variety of perle cotton colours. I debated quilting each of them but decided against it in the end.

One of the things I love is how the quilting shows up on the back:

When it came to the binding,  my original plan was a dark grey binding, somewhere between the Ash and Charcoal colours. But it just didn't feel right, nor did picking one particular colour from the focal fabrics either (orange was a strong contender). So I decided to go with a scrappy binding.

 

I really doubted my decision on this one when I pinned it on as it just seemed too much colour, but I stuck with it and once the binding was finished on the back, I knew it had been the right decision. It finishes it off nicely, and it shows up even better on the back.

Despite how much I love the quilt, there are aspects of the finish I am unhappy with. I basted this quilt twice - running into issues after the first baste - and despite taking great care second time round, I still ended up with some puckering on the front where my machine stitching lines crossed each other in the sashing. I don't know if this was because I should have stretched the quilt top more (I thought you weren't supposed to stretch, only to make it taut?) or if its a machine tension issue. I have been noticing that even when I engage the integrated walking foot on my Pfaff, the top layer of fabric is being pulled at a different rate to the bottom. Its quite obvious when I'm sewing binding on, where I have to really really stretch the binding when I'm pinning, or otherwise I end up with an extra quarter to half inch when I get to the corner. It seems like the presser foot pressure is just a tiny bit too heavy, if that makes sense? Maybe I could fix this by playing with the tension settings, if any of you have any suggestions I would love if you could email me about it as sewing machine stuff is not my strong point.

In any case,  once the quilt was washed and dried, the puckering is much less obvious and to be honest, my almost 7 year old little man couldn't care less about it anyway. It actually feels lovely. So I'm letting go of my perfectionist streak and just letting myself love it :-)

 

This quilt was on my FinishALong list, so I'm thrilled to get it done and will be adding it at the end of the quarter. I have another finish to show you too from that list - will post that next week.

Circles Quilt Top

I. am. in. love.

In LOVE.

Totally in love with this quilt top.

Sorry, did I overdo that up there at the start? That's because.....you guessed it!!

I finished up the quilt top for my little boy D on Sunday afternoon. I think its safe to say that he is in love too. It's a nice big generous lap size, measuring about 60" x 65".

I love the movement, I love how all the work fussy cutting the applique was totally worth it (thank you dear hubbie for helping me with the applique!). I love how this quilt contains some of my very favourite boys' prints. Some came from the very very bottom of my scrap basket - fabrics I had forgotten I had - like Laurie Wisbrun's elephants, Ann Kelle's owls, Michael Miller's hedgehogs and Saffron Craig's Beetle bugs (I really thought I had used all those last year).

You will remember last week I was deciding on the colour for the sashing. A lot of people agreed with my turquoise idea so I went off looking for some. I couldn't find turquoise, but I did find this gorgeous blue. The fabric label calls it Sapphire but I think its more like a Peacock blue. Whatever about the semantics, I am so pleased with how it works with the grey and the circles. I was a bit concerned that the grey would be a little dull as a background for my little man, who loves lots of colour. But the blue kind of electrifies the quilt (if that makes sense) and the whole thing just pops. It's so vibrant and exactly what I wanted for him.

I need to baste and quilt this one next...not looking forward to the basting. The effort of basting the Stained quilt left me in bed for most of the day afterwards - I felt so ill - but that was maybe a combination of the basting spray and early pregnancy hormones and utter exhaustion. I think I might pin this one. I'm planning to quilt this pretty simply - cross hatch to outline each of the squares, and the hand quilt around some of the circles as in the original pattern.

Now I need to decide on what project to start next! I'm looking at my Birds and the Bees fat quarters....

I'm linking this up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.