Friday, February 21, 2014

Finished: Dragons Quilt

I've been trying to figure out what to call this, and I just can't come up with anything clever. So Dragons Quilt it is.

I made this for my 9 year old niece, who is a big dragon fan. My sister suggested "pinks, purples, and dragon-y greens." I ended up with purplish pinks and I like it. I tried to choose fabrics that reminded me of castles (brick fabric from Kate Spain's Central Park line) or dragon scales. 
 This is a big quilt. It's 68" by 96". I was originally planning on no sashing and a green border, but when I had it all laid out it was way too pink. Putting the green in between the blocks made a big difference. However, that made the quilt bigger than expected. I was still planning to add a border, but it would have been WAY too big for a twin size bed, so I just left it off. I'm not a huge fan of sewing borders on, so that was fine with me.

The blocks are from Don't Call me Betsy's Weathervane Block tutorial. They alternate with plain squares that I quilted dragons into. More info on the dragons can be found here in my previous post.
 I quilted flames and curling smoke coming out of the dragons' mouths. I love how this turned out.
The pink fabric to the left of this pieced block is the one that looks most like dragon scales to me--it has geometric hearts on it, and they look so much like scales! I was really happy to find that one.
I hope my niece loves it! I've been working on this off and on for over 4 months, and it feels so good to have it done.
I'm linking up today to Finish it Up Friday and Link a Finish Friday.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

WiP: Quilted Dragons

I FINALLY got my niece's quilt all quilted this week. She loves dragons, and has for a long time, so I put dragons in all of the plain squares. My sister (her mom) is an amazing artist, and designed this motif for me. She's looking into selling PDF's of her designs.
 I did freehand flames and curling smoke coming out of the dragons' mouths over the pieced blocks. I love how it turned out!
I finished the quilting yesterday, and now all I have to do is bind it and this will be DONE! More pictures soon! I set aside the x-strings for a bit as I have some other deadlines right now, but I'm close to the quilting stage for that one too.

Linking up to Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

WiP: Removing Paper /How Should I Quilt This?

I haven't done much paper piecing in the past but chose to have members of my local Salt Lake MQG bee make paper-pieced x-strings blocks for me last year. There were six of us who participated so we each made two blocks each month, and it went for six months. I was just waiting on one more block so I could put this together. The block I was waiting on was... MINE! I only made one block when I made the instructions to hand out, and finally made the other one a couple of days ago. My month was April, so it has been a long time. It feels good to be making progress on this again!
I got all twelve blocks sewn together and now I'm removing the paper from the center blocks. I'm leaving it around the edges until I get a border on. Some of the people removed the paper, which stretched the edges a little bit. It was tricky to get the edges to match up in a few places as a result, but it turned out okay despite one or two small tucks.
 I am LOVING this. I'm really looking forward to getting it done.

I'm planning to add a narrow white border around the outside, then a super-wide border of this matching print around that. It will be about 18 inches wide. The large border will make it into a twin-size quilt. I'm adding the wide borders for a few reasons:
1. At 6'3" with a 6'7" husband, lap quilts only cover our laps. Small quilts don't cut it around here.
2. We need more spare twin-size quilts for the kids' beds in case of illness or whatever else might call for an emergency quilt.
3. I bought 5 yards of this print on a mega-good sale a year ago intending to use it as a backing, so I have plenty of fabric to do it.
I'm hoping that it "works" as a finished design.
 Now I'm debating how to quilt it? Should I custom quilt the blocks, or just do a quick allover design to get it done fast? I'm considering wavy lines, or possibly something geometric.

I'm also making a lot of progress on my niece's Christmas quilt. I know, it's February now, but it's getting there. I got all of the blocks sewn together along with sashing. I need to add one more border to the outside and then it's ready for quilting too. It was a bit windy outside when we tried to get a photo.
I also made two new pairs of pajama pants, so I've been really productive! It feels good to get so much done. I still don't have a lot of time, but I've been using more of the time that I have and feeling much better about things.

Linking up today to Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.
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