About 2 years ago I gifted one of my sisters a coupon for a quilt, made to her own preferences. The process of actually getting to sewing it was a slow one (picking colours, buying fabric, designing the pattern…) but last spring I got around putting all the pieces together, and the quilt above is the result!
Continue reading “Kaleidoscope quilt”
Every now and then I like to make a quilt, and I try to sew one for all friends who become parents for the first time. If possible, I like to connect the theme of the quilt to what they like, or something with a story attached to it. This particular quilt was made for two of my best friends and their baby, and when they told me they were expecting I immediately knew it had to be a ladybug themed blanket. I will not go into the full story here as it is not mine to share, but it was equally nerdy and endearing.
I started the idea of the quilt while my friend was still pregnant, but in between moving house, starting a new life in a new city and a head that could just for the moment not deal with designing a quilt block with a ladybug in it, the quilt was not finished before the baby was born, but I set myself the goal to finish it before their first birthday. To make my life a little easier, I reverse engineered the ladybug blocks from a patchwork block I found on the internet, and therefore I will not share a full tutorial on it. I made 8 of them, and they look like this:
I made four lighter and four darker ones, because that is what I still had in my stash, and used all kinds of green scraps for the background blocks. Once I figured out how to do the blocks and the rest, the quilt came together quite fast. The ladybug blocks have a lot of seams, and therefore were not completely flat, which caused the rest of the quilt top to also deform a little. I decided not to worry about it too much, because the batting in the quilt probably could correct for that later on (it did for the most part). To be honest, I really like quilting, but I will not fuss endlessly over things not being completely flat or not lining up perfectly. As long as it’s half decent looking, I am happy.
For the backside I found a fabric with a photographic grassy print, which I thought was very appropriate for the quilt. I used a polyester batting and quilted the blanket on the stitch lines between the blocks. The edge was made in the same fabric as the back. I think it turned out pretty good, and I hope the almost-todler by now will enjoy it for many years to come!
Last year my sister decided to buy a van and convert it into a small camper. She loves the mountains, and this tiny house on wheels would allow her to travel and set up camp very easily, so she and our dad worked weekend after weekend to build the interior. I wanted to give her a ‘housewarming’ gift, and decided a quilt would be suitable. Evenings in the mountains can be chilly, and who doesn’t like a cozy quilt anyway?
Because I wanted it to fit into her ideas perfectly, we made the design together. She wanted something with mountains in subdued and calm colours… We settled on a design of diagonal squares with stylized snow on the mountain tops, and a bit of grass in the foreground. Since I am not very proficient in elaborate piecing (I also don’t have the patience I think) everything is squares, triangles and rectangles. To add more visual interest I proposed to go with batik fabrics, and my sister picked the colours. That’s where the calm colours went out of the window, because Quiltshop-online has so many pretty choices. The pinks and reds represent mountains at sunset, and I liked the idea instantly.
Upon arrival of the fabrics, I fiddled a bit with the design, shuffled the mountains a bit back and forth, and started cutting. I don’t have any pictures of the process, but I started in the top right corner of the center piece and worked my way to the opposite corner in diagonal rows, always trying to keep the pieces as large as possible. Then I added the green strips for the grass. I had enough dark green left to add a border around the center to “close off” this part. Without this border the front would have looked more pale, and I think this was the best decision.
The quilt was still a bit small to be a decent lap size quilt, so I added a simple white cotton border to solve this. The quilt was then batted with a cotton batting and a blue-grey back with a honeycomb-like pattern. I used a meandering freeform stitch to quilt the blanket. It looks nice, and saves the effort of perfectly stitching on the lines of your quilt. Then I used the back fabric for a narrow border, and the blanket was done!
Below are two more pictures of a happy camper and her blanket. Dear sis, I hope you enjoy your camper, trips and blanket for many more years to come!
Dutch Sewing Scientist 