Two Finishes!

Well, I'm sitting at home with strep throat, bored out of my mind, so I managed to finish two quilts this week, and one of them hand-quilted, wahoo!

Today, I'll show you the machine-quilted one (won't have anything else finished in the next few days, so I've got to stretch this over at least two posts ;)

The only thing holding me up with my Hoot Hoot quilt was the lack of embroidery thread and needle. For how little I needed to do on this quilt, I didn't want to go and buy everything needed, but I was lucky enough to find someone I could borrow a needle and a foot of thread from! After that, it only took a day to get the claws and 'ear-hair' on the owl:


I basted the quilt that same afternoon.


Didn't have any hesitation deciding on the quilting, for some reason... sometimes the ideas just snap right in, other times I have to hum and hah for a few months, it seems.

I started with the owl, outlining the wings, body, face and pupils as I didn't trust all of my hand-applique to hold up during subsequent washes. I also quilted some feathers (the owl kind, not the decorative kind) on the body.


Next, I loopy-loop quilted all over the background. I learned that you have to plan carefully where to start if you don't want to cross lines and end up where you started WITHOUT having to go around the outside of the quilt first - puffiness alarm! I made it work somehow, but next time I'll think ahead ;)


Lastly, I outlined around the wonky stacked coins. That was a bit of a pain because I used a walking foot, so had to turn every 1/2" to 2". Luckily, it was a small stack of coins!


And here is the finished product!


You can even see the owl outline on the back (on the left in this pictures)!



This quilt was fun to make and I love the personal touch of my own applique shape. Maybe I'll make a series next, I'd love to make a giraffe and an elephant!!

Stay tuned for finish #2!

Hoot Hoot Greetings

I've finished appliqueing the owl to my Hoot Hoot quilt.

I'm currently searching for my big needles to embroider "ear hair" and claws. I'm getting a bit impatient to get going, so if I don't find them soon, I'll go and buy new needles.


Question for you: I also can't find my stash of embroidery yarn, do you think wool will do the trick or should I just go and buy some thicker yarn (embroidery or darning or whatever)?

What's New?

Well, apart from the Monkey Mechanic quilt, quilting action has been slow around here.

I'm working away on the Hoot Hoot Owl applique.


Here I'm attaching the branches. After the first branch came out a bit wavy, I basted the second branch on first and then I appliqued it on. I think you're supposed to do that sometimes anyway, I just forgot. A few more stitches on the branch and then that quilt is ready for basting and (machine)quilting.


I've also been quilting on the Love U in Green quilt. Great little project to take to my bee meetings (we've met twice so far, it's fun!). I decided on concentric squares and like the effect quite a lot. As you can see, I've got a bit of attention deficit going on, as I can't seem to finish a square before starting the next one, so I have several on the go, in various stages of completion :)


I'm also on the final touches of the Imagination 1 quilting, here's a sneak preview:

The Border:
Some of the circle quilting:

Unfortunately, it's been much too hot to hand-quilt these past few days, and the soccer world cup demanded some attention as well, but now that all that is over, I'll get back to stitching :)

Oh, and some of you had wondered about the border on the WonderChain quilt, this is the stencil I used for it. I really liked working with stencils. I've tried free-hand hand-quilting before, as well as free-hand drawing a pattern on, and it just doesn't look as good as a stencil in terms of uniformity. I have a small collection of stencils now and will certainly use them again!

Hoot Hoot

I think I'm *slightly* obsessed with owls. My finger always hovers over the "add to cart" button when I see owl fabric, I recently won a pattern for a hand-sewn owl and I own a few owl prints, including this new one that came with the latest fabric order:


So when I started working on my "to quilt" list, based on some of the quilts I feel inspired by, I decided to begin with a baby quilt in a similar style to this one made by Anne of Film and Thread.

Interestingly, this quilt also inspired my Imagination 1 quilt - weird, I know!

The inspiration was obviously limited to the quilt not being symmetrical/mirrored in any way.

My version began like this, with whacky stacked coins :) I used all the bluish charms I had left from the MODA Love You charmpack after making the Green Love You quilt.

Next I tried to decide between putting a bird on the open space (like Anne did) or an elephant - for some reason I like elephants on fabrics as well.

But I noticed that one of the Love You prints has owls on it - Bingo!

I cut out the shapes on regular paper to see what it would look like.


Then I picked some patterns to match the charms, cut the shapes out with ~1/4" seam added. I didn't pin anything, just held the pattern in place and either used a rotary cutter or scissors to cut the shapes out - I'm not that fussy in some things, amazingly :)

Now it was time to see how to do the hand-applique, haven't done that since the soccer quilt and the apple worm quilt, really!

I thought this would be a good project for the bee, since I wouldn't have to lug my machine around. However, it's proven extremely difficult setting up a time to meet for 4 different people. Who would have thought... just four people ;) So the other night I started on this and ended up doing the entire owl while watching a good, serious movie called The Life Of Words.

I began attaching the black pupils to the white eyes using, I guess, the "proper" applique stitch. It looks messy on the back, and I didn't really like how that stitch worked with the rounded edge of a small (approx. 1" diameter) circle.


So I switched to the hidden stitching I use for the binding, liked that much better - and see how neat that looks!


Here you can see the look of the pupils. Admittedly, they look a bit messy partly because I clipped the edges, seeing if that makes the folding-under of fabric easier (it didn't).
You can also see that I didn't bother marking any seam allowances, ironing seams or doing paper shapes, I just placed, did the first stitch, and folded under - stitched - folded under etc etc :)


I finger pressed what looked like a scant 1/4" on straight or straightish seams like the wings and the big body shape.


And here we go, one owl coming right up :) It's on my knees, hence it looks all wobbly :)


I'm planning to embroider or quilt some claws on once I've attached the branch, and also give the little HootHootOwl some hairy ears ;) Funfunfun!!