I’m so excited to share a project with you I secretly did this summer. Remember in an earlier blog post when I promised I was working on a lot of things I couldn’t share yet? This was one of those things! I made a quilt for Heather’s next collection, Kinder.
I love Heather, I love her fabrics, and I always love helping her out with projects to showcase her new collections. (Reminder: I made a quilt last year for Sleeping Porch. You can check it out here.)
The Kinder look book is now available (find it here) and you can check out all the beautiful projects using the collection, including the crib quilt I made.
This quilt had a couple of challenges, mainly sewing curves. I never sew curves! I had to do a double-think on those curves. Is that a thing, a double-think? I’m not sure if it is but I had to do some extra thinking on how to sew them; it’s been awhile.
Sewing curves are really not that hard, especially once you get started and into the swing of them. And even though I had to spend a little bit more time on this project to make the curves, I’m glad I had to make them. It gave me an opportunity to brush up on my skills, and sometimes it’s good to push yourself to do something you’re not always comfortable doing.
This design is based on a sketch Heather did. You can download the sketch for free on her website to make your own version of this quilt, if you would like.
Here’s some pictures I took of the quilt top before it was quilted. You can see all those wonky curves.
The great thing about this pattern/sketch is that you can pretty much make it your own. Want a lot of little curves? Go for it. Want some bigger, more subtle curves? You can do that too.
My quilting friend Mary did a version of this quilt for the look book as well. (Hi Mary!) I made the PENELOPE quilt and Mary made the OLIVER quilt. She also did the quilting for both, and I highly recommend her if you are looking for someone to longarm for you. You can find Mary here.
The other challenging part of this quilt was the applique. Or maybe I shouldn’t say it was challenging – it was not – but instead I should say that it’s a type of quilting I really don’t do. I don’t know why I don’t do it, because now I’m thinking I should! Applique is a great project to work on when you don’t have access to a sewing machine, or when you just want to sit on the couch watching TV and do a little hand sewing.
Anyway…the PENELOPE letters are appliqued on. It was very easy and didn’t take long, but really adds to the quilt.
Having the alphabet print in the Kinder collection means there are many opportunities to cut individual letters for appliqueing names or other words on the quilt, which is such a special way to personalize a baby quilt.
I love this collection. It is classic Heather Ross designs. The colors are great, the prints are great, and there are so many fun projects you can make with it – both for kids and adults.
Go check out the look book and start planning your projects for when it ships next year!
Hey there. How’s it going? What have you all been working on? Did you have a good summer?
I’ve been very lazy about posting on here this summer (I’m much better keeping in touch on Instagram), but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been quilting. I have been! Even while I’ve been away.
The second half of my summer turned out to be busier than I planned on and I’ve spent some time out of town. While I was gone, I worked on an English Paper Piecing project and I even photographed a few projects and will be sharing them here in the next few weeks.
The first one I photographed while I was away is my finished Stonington quilt.
This quilt features Denyse Schmidt’s Stonington collection. You can read more about the design of this quilt in a previous post here.
Don’t you love the colors in Stonington?
For the quilting on this one, I went with very dense stitches. I’m a fan of dense quilting and love the texture it provides.
The back of this quilt was a bit of an experiment for me and very thought-out, meaning it took a lot of measuring.
The large blue floral piece comes from a stash of old fabric I got from my grandma a few years ago. The blue matches perfectly and the floral/vintage feel coordinates so well with Stonington, but it wasn’t big enough for the whole quilt so I came up with the idea of putting white panels along the sides.
While I like the look of having the white panels along the sides of the back, I must admit it was a pain to do. I thought it was a great idea until I realized how challenging it is to get them lined up just right so they’re even on both sides. Let’s just say there was a fair amount of cursing happening while I was basting this one.
Now that it’s done I’m glad I put the time into it, but confession: it’s not quite perfect. As it happens when quilting, it did shift a bit so the white panels are off a smidge, but it’s pretty close. I’m still glad I did it because it’s something different than I’ve done before and I always like to switch things up.
Hope you enjoyed this one, and keep checking back. I have more projects I will be posting in the coming weeks!