Monday, May 19, 2014

Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry



AmysCreativeSide.com
Okay, I've decided to take a deep breath, ignore all the mistakes on my quilt--my third one--and enter my Hoot Hoot Owl quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival in the small quilts category. Thank you, Amy, for hosting the Festival. I have seen sooo many beautiful quilts

I love my Hoot Hoot Owl quilt despite its mistakes or maybe because of them. I have learned a lot making this quilt and with each quilt, I learn more.


I had the help of one very unhappy cat (because I kept trying to move her) while making this quilt, which is why I have diagonals and not diamonds for the quilting. The process was quilt, move cat, quilt, move cat. She now has her own quilted cat pad, which I would enter, but all the points are off center--it was for the cat and she didn't care. You can see the cat pad here if you are interested.


The pattern is from the makeitModern 2013 BHG magazine. Lots of great quilt patterns in that magazine. I just changed the color scheme because this is for a little girl who likes pink. I stitched in the ditch (getting better, but not great) around "most" of the appliqué, which was done by machine. Then straight-stitched white window panes in the blue and diagonals in the pink. 


For the first time ever, I buried my threads--shocking to me that I did that. I machine stitched the binding using an embroidery stitch with a multi-colored Mettler thread. For the rest of the quilt I used white Aurifil, 50 wt.


Looking faded out in the sun--I have to work on my photography skills also.



The back of the quilt. I swear it is much prettier than it looks in this photo--see the note above re my photography skills.


Thanks for looking at my entry. Here's to seeing new quilts and getting new inspiration!

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Quilted Cat Pads

While I realize it may be a little strange to title a post "quilted cat pads," I have made a cat pad with leftover cutouts from another project. I made the cat pad because one of my cats, Willow, loves to sit with me while I quilt. The problem is that she sits ON whatever it is I am quilting. If you know anything about cats, you will see that Willow is NOT happy about me nudging her off the quilt.


Talk about tiny stitches when you are trying to quilt with an 11-pound cat on your quilt. Because she is normally a very sweet cat, I decided to make her a cat pad. It had to be quilted because she only sits on the quilted parts--a picky cat.


At first, she didn't seem that enthused about her own quilt, but seems to have warmed up to it. I will really see if it is going to work when I quilt another largish quilt on my machine and stretch it out across the table.  Below are two photos, unfortunately on a cloudy day, of the cat pad--based on monochromatic napkins designed by Rachel of Stitched on Color for her color theory class. I learned a lot in that class! I love these colors and have to get back to my LQS to buy some more fabric before it is gone. Once I buy more, I will post the fabric information.



Jaspyrr just totally ignored the quilt, so it is a good thing I didn't make him one! Please ignore the weeds in the photo. I really have to get out there and plant some catnip or something prettier.


Tallulah, on the other hand, wanted to make the quilt her own. I guess she gets the next quilted cat pad.




Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Hoot Hoot Quilt Done!

YEAH! I finally finished the Hoot Hoot quilt that I started on so long ago, and I actually have a little time to blog about it. I learned a couple of things on this quilt.


  1. If you have a large applique and use fusible web to add it to the quilt, cut out the big parts and only fuse the edges. The owl is stiff.
  2. I think I know how to bury threads now, BUT do I need to knot the threads before I bury them? I didn't, so there may be a problem down the line.
I did the binding by machine using a decorative stitch. I am pretty sure you will be able to see the basting stitches if the edge puckers up. I thought about adding a straight stitch along the edge, but this is for a little girl to nap with, play with, and generally do whatever with, so in the end I don't think the edges matter so much. :-)

Hope you enjoy the photos.