Monday, July 23, 2012

Delectible Dinos Baby Quilt

Delectible Dinos


I went to a fabulous quilt show back in late April near Olds, AB at a place called Eagle Hill. There was a huge number of very creative, stunningly beautiful, difficult looking quilts displayed there! Very impressive work!
One little baby quilt caught my eye. (Would that have anything to do with the fact that we had 3 month old twin grandbabies, you might ask???) :)  The baby quilt had a dozen really cute dinosaur blocks with 3 dimensional feet and a colorful edging of 3 dimensional Prairie Points surrounding it.

The name of the quilter was displayed on each quilt, so I asked around till I found the creator of the dino quilt. I asked this creative woman what the name of the quilt pattern was and she kindly took down my name and phone number and said she would call me with that information in a few days. She very kindly did that the very next day.

The name of the pattern is "Delectible Dinos" and it is a pattern from an issue of Quiltersmakers magazine, the Sept./Oct. 2003 issue to be exact.

Mostly half square triangles

I went to the Quiltmaker magazine website, but they did not have that back issue available. I finally found a copy of it at the ABE books website for $12 and with the shipping costs from the USA, plus the exchange on the Canadian dollar, I paid about  $26 for that magazine! What we grandma's won't do for our grand babies!!!


It is a delightful little quilt and I decided to make it for a new grandbaby which we are expecting this winter. The directions call for appliqued heads and feet; (The cute little heads actually extend out into the bottom of the next block. They are appliquéd on after the blocks are sewn together 'on the point'.

I decided to change the directions somewhat to make 3 dimensional feet just as the quilt at Eagle Hill had.

double sided 3D dinosaur feet and heads

I dug out my template plastic and made templates for the dino heads and feet. I cut out twice as many fabric feet and also cut out feet from scraps of batting to sew them together to make 3 D feet.

I had been thinking about making a 'play quilt' for the twins who are now 6 months old and I thought a few dino blocks with interesting 3 dimensional heads as well as feet would be the ideal thing for that  (and maybe a few blocks of Minkee animals for texture and cuteness from another pattern called "Hankie Blankie Pets baby quilt".)  (More about that project later...)

The delectable dino blocks are all finished now. I have decided not to make a prairie point edge as the directions show, but I will add a half triangle squares border around the dino blocks instead....


If the baby turns out to be a girl, I will have to come up with a more feminine quilt top and I guess I will save "Delectible Dinos" for a future baby. :)

Happy Quilting!




Thursday, July 12, 2012

Facets of Time Quilt/ Template Plastic






I loved the look of this quilt made up of 'hexagons'. It is a pattern from McCall's Quilting pet/ Oct. 2011 issue. It is made up of strip sets of four 2 1/2 inch strips of batik fabrics. I had a package of 42 'Timeless Treasures' batik 2 1/2 fabric strips which I had purchased a year ago in Sedona, Arizona and I decided it was the perfect time to use them. :)


The strip sets are then cut using a triangle template which I had made from a sheet of X-ray plastic.  (I got the plastic at a quilt store in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan at no charge, because they had no regular template plastic.)  This was my first experience with template plastic and I had no idea at the time that regular template plastic is much thicker. This X-ray plastic is so thin that it was necessary for me to use a ruler when cutting the fabric. 

The other problem with using a thin template is that I kept shaving off pieces of the edge and it kept getting smaller, LOL!
One triangle is cut with the light fabric strip at the top, then the next triangle is cut in the opposite direction with the dark fabric at the top, alternating back and forth.  Each strip set will produce 7 triangles and only 6 are needed to make the hexagon, so I had a number of triangles leftover at the end.

I used all the leftover triangles to make this table runner. The directions for this table runner are in the same McCall's Quilting issue. (Sept/Oct. 2011)
Facets of Time table runner
  The tricky part was laying all the triangle pieces out in hexagons and then rearranging the patterns so that similar hexagons were not together, so the quilt top looked more balanced.  I laid all the pieces out on the spare bed, took some photos, re-arranged the hexagons and then took more photos till I liked the overall look.

Laying the rows of triangle out on the bed in hexagons


The quilt is sewn together in rows, (not hexagon by hexagon as you might think...) It was tricky sewing the triangle rows together as the triangles had to change orientation so that they would match up with the next row, thus creating the hexagon. I pinned each triangle to its neighbour and took a few at a time into the sewing room. After a couple of mistakes (sewing the triangles facing the wrong way) I finally got it all together.

'Auditioning' the borders


After that I added the extra setting triangles of brown batik at each end to make it square, (or should I say rectangular?). Then I sewed on a 4 inch border of the same brown batik fabric all around the quilt.  Next I added a narrow 2 inch green border to give it closure and last of all I added a wide 6 inch border of light colored batik branches fabric.

It turned out wider than I had planned because of all the extra borders and so the back fabric that I had wanted to use was no longer wide enough. I had to buy a different back fabric to use; this one is a medium colored brown batik with a dark leaf pattern which I really like.



I washed the kitchen floor, taped the back fabric face down, smoothed a large piece of cotton batting on top of that and then pinned the quilt top to the other layers. It is now draped over my banister waiting to be quilted. :)