Big Baby Quilt News!

 Well the baby this quilt is intended for was born this week (in my defense, a little early), so I have been spurred to action to try to get this finished asap for her.  Over Christmas I traced out the remaining animals, but since then I have only been working on my needlepoint.  This week I sat down and finished the remaining animals pretty quickly.

pig

quail

rhino (with little birds on their backs)

sharks

turtle

unicorn

vulture

walrus

"x-ray" fish

yak

zebra

Sorry some of these came out blurry, again I'm not that great at photography and I can't tell that they're blurry from my camera screen.  Everybody is done except "i" because I thought the "iguana" actually looked like a chameleon, so I have been attempting to redesign it.

Today I laid out all of the animals on the quilt top!  I hope to finish the iguana today and get everybody ironed in place by the end of the day.  Unfortunately this top is only halfway done...now I need to raw edge applique around every single item on there!  My goal is to do an animal a day and finish the top in another month.  I'll do a very loose quilting stitch so the top stays fluffy and thus quilting should only take a weekend.  Hand stitching the binding should take another week.  So my goal is to have this finished by early to mid March.  We'll see how I do!

Latest Needlepoint

Just a quick needlepoint update; coral fish is done!  I am currently in te middle of the last big fish on this canvas, there's one more coral to do s well, then he background and I'll be done! Unfortunately I am being side-tracked by the baby quilt (see next post) but as soon as I have time for this I should be able to finish it pretty quickly.

As usual, apologies for the weird lighting, I still don't know how to take good photos of these things.  Without flash they're all yellow, with flash they're blindingly bright and washed out.

the fish before any stitching - as painted

first layer of stitching complete

with all of his enhancements added

Here's how I add all of the details, by comparing to a photo of the original painting on my computer

Needlepoint Updates

As I've been taking a break from quilting for the month, I've been catching up on my needlepoint!  It always takes me a little while to get in the swing of it because it's such an intimidating canvas, but once I get on a role it goes by quickly.

See some progress update photos below.  If you click on the photos it will show them in high res for a more detailed look.

remember this guy?

I redid him in pink.  I definitely thinks it looks better, although ripping out the black thread was a MASSIVE pain!  After doing this guy I learned that it's better to do more and more as top stitches than to try to incorporate small details into the main color stitching.

before shot of all the central corals

all stitched...as is the little yellow and black fish.  He's still not perfect compared to the painting but I think I'm improving.  All of his stripes were added second.  The curves on his dorsal fins aren't as perfectly curved as they could be.

Winter Chickadee Wallhanging

I made five of these as Christmas gifts for family.  I loved how photo realistic the pattern was, and it holds a special remembrance of home for me because I spent a lot of time watching the chickadees at our cabin bird feeder, and even once spent half a day enticing them to eat seed of out my hand.

This pattern is also nice as a Christmas gift because it can basically stay up all winter.  The scene was made with ultra-hold fusible web, that is not made to be sewn over.

I really enjoyed assembling the birds.  Each was made up of ten different pieces.  It was fun to start out with ten odd-looking shapes and have them manifest into such a detailed critter!

all three birds fully assembled

All of the fusible web pieces assembled

The assembled quilt top, before quilting and scrollwork was added (by the way, that scrollwork was really painful to cut out)

  After a lot of research, I decided to machine quilt snowflakes into the background.  It was tedious but okay for such a small area.  I stitched holly leaves around the border.

quilting close-up

quilting close-up

This pattern was fun to make, but five was too many.  I'm a little burnt out on quilting for a while!

Christmas coasters

Here is the Christmas edition of my coasters!  Made to be reversible, each of these ended up with a different quilting design as I was trying many out.  I made twelve, for three sets of four for my coworkers. The best quilting design ended up being a free motion christmas bow.  Sadly I forgot to take photos of the quilting step.

The fabric choices.  I was trying to go for relatively secular.

Coasters post-assembly but pre-quilting.  I was able to make them much rounder than the first batch by drawing the circle line on them with that blue water-soluble marker.

All quilted and ready for gifting!

Coasters

I made these coasters for our coffee table a while ago.  The fabric is wine glasses.  I had trouble keeping the shape perfectly round, and also it was challenging to think of interesting designs to quilt onto each of them.  I like the fabric because it's a nice color for all seasons, however on the small size of the coasters it's hard to actually tell that the fabric has glasses on it.

These were very quick and easy to make, as a result I am currently working on making Christmas coasters for my co-workers.

the glass fabric

finished coasters with a variety of designs quilted in

Alphabet Animals Cont.

More animals for your viewing pleasure.  I've amassed these over the past few weeks.  I'm about halfway through the alphabet!  You'll notice there's no I because I felt the drawing in the pattern for "I" (Iguana) was clearly a chameleon instead of an iguana, so I'm going to draw one myself (eventually)...

Chickens - done out of order because I didn't own any brown fabric

Giraffe

horse

Jellyfish

Kangaroos

Lions

Monkeys - faces to be appliqued on later

Newts- they look like geckos but they're slimy and usually orange/black

Octopus