Friday, May 21, 2010

'Quilting For babes' - Flying Geese Quilt

Well, the 'Quilting for Babes' little quilt top is finished now! This is the preemie quilt project ( as my daughter calls it) which is the brainstorm of Kathy Murray, a very busy and caring young mother from Winnipeg.

If you want to know more about that altruistic project you can go to Kathy's blog and read all about it :

http://magnoliadesigns.blogspot.com/

Or see:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/shes-caring-for-babies-like-others-did-for-hers-91892684.html


This little quilt top is 24' by 36' in size as requested and the blocks are all little flying Geese blocks, 4"by 2"rectangles, sewn in 6 rows of 10 blocks with yellow fabric strips in between and around the outer border. The in between yellow strips are 1 1/2 inches wide ( cut 2 inches wide to begin with for seam allowances). The top and bottom yellow borders are 2 inches wide to get it to exactly 24 inches in width, and the side borders are 2 1/4 inches in width so it is exactly 36 inches long! Ta da!


I have also sandwiched it together, in other words, pinned the back fabric, the batting and the top together. It is now ready to be machine quilted!

(For directions on how to make this block, see my "Flying Geese" post (May 5)  and for directions on how to machine quilt, go to my other post by the same name... "Learning to Machine Quilt'" (March 26) You might also want to check out " Quilt Roll Photos - March 26 which has handy information about rolling a larger quilt as you prepare to machine quilt it.)


I spent last weekend quilting up a storm for 3 straight days with my wonderful daughter R2! She drove here to spend a few days with us,  just her and the dog, and to quilt! R2 is just learning to quilt, but has caught on really quickly to the techniques and I think she has caught the quilting fever!

A number of weeks ago she and I had our very first mother/ daughter quilt session. We went shopping in town for fabric and she chose some very vibrant colors and prints to make blocks for her first top. She decided to make a baby quilt, something relatively small to start out.

We looked at patterns in some of my magazines, but none of them jumped out at her.  R2 decided to make a variety of her own  blocks and she drew the arrangement out on a piece of paper.  I showed her how to cut the fabric using a ruler, cutting wheel and a cutting mat.  She cut all the pieces, but didn't have time to assemble them here. After she drove home R2 spent the next few days sewing the pieces together into blocks and then sewing the blocks together. She had quite a bit of fabric left over so she made herself another whole set of blocks. Then she phoned me and asked what to do next. That led to the  3 day quilting session that we had last weekend!

I showed R2 how to put on mitered outer borders to finish off the quilt tops.Then we measured it, added 6 inches to the length and the width measurements to figure out how big to cut the back fabric and the batting to those dimensions.
We taped the back fabric upside down to the kitchen floor with strips of masking tape, laid the batting on top of that and then last laid the little quilt top on top of the layers. (What I call "sandwiching") Then we proceeded to pin all three layers together.

After that R2 quilted both of her little quilts on her machine. Last of all, I showed her how to make the mock border using the extra back fabric, which is sewn over to the front as the quilt edge. They both turned out well and she is quite proud of them! 

While she was here, she saw the little 'Flying Geese' blocks that I had made and was curious how to make them. I had some extra squares and rectangles cut out so I showed her and she made several of her own. At one point we went shopping for more fabric and it was quite evident that R2 HAS caught the quilting bug by the amount of new fabric she bought!  We had a thoroughly enjoyable weekend together and we hope to do another quilting session soon!

Now I'm running some ideas through my head about how to machine quilt my little 'Flying Geese baby quilt.....  It promises to be a cool and rainy long weekend so instead of planting the trays of bedding plants I have stashed on our deck, there will be some humming of the sewing machine going on!

Will keep you posted!

...As you may have noticed, I have been neglecting this quilting blog somewhat. I guess that's because I have been devoting so much time to my other passion, gardening! Not only that, I have started a gardening blog on my gardening adventures in rural central Alberta!

http://carolasgarden.blogspot.com/

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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

T's completed Baby Quilt May 4, 2010



Finally completely finished our niece T's baby quilt last night. (Her baby boy is due in 4 weeks.) I am so pleased with how the little quilt turned out I almost want to keep it for myself! LOL!

The pattern was pretty simple and the blocks were mostly 9 inches in size so it went together quite quickly. It involved some fussy cutting to get nine 6 1/2" Panda squares, and to try and centralize some of the smaller animal squares, but I like the over all effect of the sky blue and the lime green.

I changed the pattern dimensions somewhat, reducing the original quilt pattern in size. This little 'baby' is 44" by 44" in size, (not 55" by 59 1/2" as in the original pattern- "Baby Signs" pg. 64, The Quilter magazine, July 2008 issue.) I rather like my version!

Flying Geese Blocks ( How to)!


Example of a Flying Geese quilt-
pink baby quilt made last April (2009)



Directions to make easy 'Flying Geese' blocks


Cut out rectangles 4 1/2" by 2 1/2 " and twice as many 2 1/2"squares
Draw a diagonal line on back of squares

Sew on diagonal line;
Press square back to form triangle


Sew 2nd square onto block, overlap it just slightly.


Cut off unneeded fabric, if you wish





Assortment of completed "Flying Geese" blocks


I have decided on a pattern for the next little baby quilt, the "Quilting for Babes" quilt that I'm making for Kathy Murray's altruistic neonatal project in Winnipeg. She wants the finished quilts all to be 24" by 36" and so I decided to make Flying Geese blocks (4" by 2") which I can easily make into a quilt that size. (Most of my other quilt patterns are either square patterns and/ or too big and I can't figure out how to change them to make it exactly 24 by 36 inches.)

One nice thing about making Flying Geese blocks is that you can use up small amounts of left over fabric that is difficult to find a use for otherwise (and I hate to throw things out!)

I started cutting some of the fabric last night. I have a bunch of the 2 1/2 by 4 1/2 little rectangles cut out and also many of the little 2 1/2 squares. I drew the diagonal lines on the back of some of the little squares with a pencil. The next step is to sew 2 little squares diagonally on the pencil line at each end of the rectangles, one square at a time, pressing the squares over into a triangle to get the Flying Geese V in the middle. Overlap them just slightly at the middle of the rectangle.

(I find that if I sew just a smidge to the outside of the pencil line, the blocks turn out better.)

After that, you have the choice whether to cut off the unneeded bottom half of the square (or some people will tell you to cut both the square and the rectangle underneath to alleviate the thickness of the ends of the blocks), but I usually don't bother to cut off anything. I think it adds to the thickness of the quilt itself and it is not noticeable in any way once the blocks are sewn into a quilt.

( The very first time I made a quilt with flying geese blocks I did cut off all the extra till parts and then I used then to make mini flying geese and sewed them all sideways to make a different strip which I incorporated into the quilt. It was a lot of work but uniquely my own design so I like it!)

See photos above... I wish I knew how to make my photos appear in the middle of the text next to the paragraph it concerns!!!)

Once you have a number of the blocks completed then sew them to one another in a row so all the middle triangles are facing the same direction just like a line of flying geese. You can make your rows as long or as short as you want your quilt to be. Separate those rows by strips of fabric any width you like but 2 inch width is pretty common.


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