The Making of The Quilt

I’m sure this is more than anyone really wants to know, but for those few intrepid souls who are interested:

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As you can see, I have plenty of scraps to chose from.

I chose this large scrap of fabric as a frame to help make the fabric layers stand out better. It’s a very nice, soft, slightly fuzzy material that holds it’s color well. I thought this second piece of the same material had an interesting shape, and would balance and expand on the first. I’ll post a picture of it later.

This section will be the center piece. I decided to go with a hearts and flowers theme for shapes and a brick road effect for the lowest layers. Notice that I’m already putting in little twists.

The back side will be all flannel. You can see how I’m coming on it here.

I then stitch it down right through the notch. The results?

Well, The Girl said it’s ugly. It isn’t quite what I had visualized either. I’ve decided to make two changes to the plan. First, I’ll be adding some pink petals around this shape to make it more flower like. Second, I’m going to move it off-center I think doing so will give it more visual interest.

By the way, if you look closely toward the bottom of this last picture, you will see the bit of interestingly-shaped fabric i thought I’d use at the bottom. On second glance, it seems to me to be shaped a bit like a can opener, which I don’t think is right for the theme. I still like the shape, but maybe not for this quilt? What do you think?

I’m going with the results of the poll, and leaving out the can opener shaped bit of fabric. I had already decided to go with a brick-road effect, and the can opener was getting overwhelmed. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing with petals.

First I tried this, but it seemed too busy. Then I switched to all one kind of material, then all of another, then a different combination. Nothing seemed right. I still haven’t settled on anything.

So I went back to the brick thing. I cut out several pieces with a brick like shape and started stitching them together. Then I stopped while deciding what to do about the can opener shape. Then I ran into problems with my sewing machine, which doesn’t like the different weights and types of fabric going through together. I cut out some hearts, which I think I might be able to use as a kind of flower thing. Out of frustration I bagged that side for now and switched to the back.

I’m doing the entire back out of flannel. I picked out all the flannel I had available and set it aside. Then I started with the edges. I’m going to work my way across from one edge to the other until it’s completely done.

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a385/AliceAudrey/Blog3/Quilt34.jpg

taken down 8/13/10

I’m going with the results of the poll, and leaving out the can opener shaped bit of fabric. I had already decided to go with a brick-road effect, and the can opener was getting overwhelmed. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing with petals.

First I tried this, but it seemed too busy. Then I switched to all one kind of material, then all of another, then a different combination. Nothing seemed right. I still haven’t settled on anything.

So I went back to the brick thing. I cut out several pieces with a brick like shape and started stitching them together. Then I stopped while deciding what to do about the can opener shape. Then I ran into problems with my sewing machine, which doesn’t like the different weights and types of fabric going through together. I cut out some hearts, which I think I might be able to use as a kind of flower thing. Out of frustration I bagged that side for now and switched to the back.

I’m doing the entire back out of flannel. I picked out all the flannel I had available and set it aside. Then I started with the edges. I’m going to work my way across from one edge to the other until it’s completely done.

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a385/AliceAudrey/Blog3/Quilt34.jpg

For a variety of reasons I decided to switch from the front of the quilt to the back. This side is much easier as I’m not trying to do anything fancy here. There are no imagery references, not that much variety weaving, and no variety in types of fabric. It’s all entirely flannel.

I had already pieced together several pieces, making patches of twos and threes. I’d been doing this all along while working on the front. Out of curiosity, I laid them out on my bed to see if I had enough material going. It looked just about perfect.

One of the pieces seemed a bit too big, but I liked the shape, and didn’t want to lose it entirely. So I cut it in half, then tried out a variety of fabric to go between.

Much like with the front, I was quick to build my edges. Unlike with the front, I made no effort to find a theme or go for an over-all image. Instead, I started from the left side and a bit of the very middle and worked my way across, going for as even a distribution of patches as I could.

Then it was simply a matter of putting it together.

I still have some trimming to do, but for the most part, it’s done.

Now back to the front. I tossed the parts I’d made so far together and thought about what else I could be doing.

The idea of roses appealed to me, so I thought I’d go for a dozen, a combination of roses in bloom and buds. Only problem, I’d never done it before, and had no pattern. So I printed out a picture of an actual rose that I had used on my blog and tried to imitate it. I ended up with a lovely red blob.

I image-googled “rose bud” and ended up with plenty of ideas. I’m afraid some of the buds came out looking more like leaves, but at least I ended up with a dozen of them.

Now to deal with the ugly flower.

I had plenty of this bright material and really wanted to use it, but no matter how I arranged it, I couldn’t get it to work with the base. So instead I used it to make a veritable star burst of a flower.

I tried out a number of different lay outs to pull it together.

And for the rest, go here.