Monkeys!

I'm a professional quilter! Kinda!

A friend of mine asked me if she could commission me to make a baby quilt for her friend. She would pay for the fabric and my time, and I would happily make a quilt.

About monkeys! This is the sweetest thing I've ever made. Take a look.



A rarity for me, I actually followed a pattern to make this. Kinda. The original pattern, found in this book, created by this designer, was too adorable to pass up. However, after consultation with my client (!!), it was decided that not all the squares needed to be monkeys. And, during the course of our ramblings at the fabric store, we decided it was best if all the sashing were the same fabric. So, tweaks were made.

Instead of nine monkeys on the quilt, there would be five squares of monkeys and four nine-patch squares. After a comment from my friend about wishing there were letters, in addition to the numbers from the pattern, quilted into the finished product, I decided the squares of the pieced blocks would make perfect places for the letters of the alphabet.



Also, I added a number and a banana applique in a fit of last-minute inspiration. (Read: Oh crap, I have to cover this up somehow without taking the whole quilt apart!) I think they bring an extra something to the quilt, don't you?



Finally, I'd like to leave you with this series, photographed when the monkeys were still under construction. This illustrates how the difference between us and ninjas truly isn't that great.

Monkey:



Ninjamonkey!

Purple Coneflower

I'm still catching up on unfinished quilts. This is one I picked up last weekend and finished during the week. The top was created during the International Quilt Festival in a class by Wendy Butler Burns on machine applique. I had already finished the top and fused it to Decor Bond, which is a stabilizer. The stabilizer is needed to keep the fabric from puckering up when you machine stitch over the seams. Last weekend, I did this machine stitching and discovered it's not as easy as I thought it would be to keep a steady line with a free-motion zig zag stitch. But, I soldiered on.

In retrospect, I think this quilt would have benefited from a border or two. However, I had a few roadblocks on that front. I didn't feel I had just the right fabric, for one. Mainly, though, adding a border would mean patching in more Decor Bond, and this was a process I had not done before. To put the binding on without a border, I didn't need to add any more of the stabilizer; so I took the easy way out. In the end, it's still pretty, and that's all I need.



There's something nice about knowing that the piece you're working on is not for anyone in particular, is not for a competition, and therefore will not be judged. This quilt was something that I could learn on, and something that I wanted to finish to please myself. I took this opportunity to experiment with some variegated silk threads I bought at the festival. They were even more luscious and beautiful than I thought they would be! Many of the threads turned out to be thicker than I anticipated, but the thicker thread creates a beauty of its own. I'm very happy with the way this quilt turned out!

Free-Motion Quilting...Loops?

While I was working on the last quilt, I ran into problems with these loops showing up on the back side of the quilt. It seemed if I kept my stitches neat and smallish, the effect would be minimized, but I grew frustrated with their presence, and my inability to eliminate them. What to do?



Last Thursday night, I was flipping through a book by Katie Pasquini Masopust and found a side-bar note about the subject. She suggests threading the needle with the presser foot in the up position, otherwise you'll find these loops on the underside of your quilt. In all the possible things I could think of that I might be doing wrong, this did not occur to me. And to think, I found this solution very much on accident.

So, I have hope that the problem will be resolved with the next quilt.

Baby Quilt Finished, Hurray!

Here it is, in all its glory: the baby quilt that was completed and given away last weekend. I really love how this turned out. The fabrics are all delicious and work perfectly together. And it looks exactly as Electronic Quilt said it would. Thanks to everyone who weighed in on which design I should use.

I was a little sad to see this quilt go!



I used strip-piecing to piece the top of the quilt. This means I sewed two long strips of fabric together, then cut perpendicular to the seam, creating smaller strips of two squares that were sewn together. Two sets of these strips were sewn together to create a 4-patch.

I've included some close-up pictures of the quilt so you can see the free-motion quilting lines. You can also see the fun navy fabric with the wacky flowers and random eyeballs. (Or olives? You decide.)



And here's the payoff at the end: the patch that says "I made this!" Also, check out the flowers on the back side of the quilt!