Retrospective: Tweet Quilt

I was working with my students last night at the beginner quiltmaking classes I run (last one - they gave me chocolates to say thank you!!), when it occurred to me that I never showed the full pictures of the commission quilt I made back in September last year.

I was using one of the birds as an appliqué pattern for my students and they really liked it so I wanted to show them pictures of the quilt it came from.

What was tricky about this quilt was all the fabrics.  The woman who I was making it for asked her friends to bring pieces of fabrics to the little girl's second birthday party with the intention of putting them into a 'keeping quilt'.  Of course, because they all came from different people, none of the fabrics were particularly coordinating!

I had a pinterest board to work from, which was a big help in designing the quilt.  Adding lots of white space made most of the fabrics play nicely with each other.  Then I used all the NZ themed fabrics on the back with a black and white strip, black and white being very 'NZ' colours.

There was a woollen scarf in the bunch of fabrics and the suggestion was to use this for a tree branch, which I was nervous about but it worked out great.

I added more fabrics from my own stash to bridge between some of the original fabrics and I had great fun drawing up different bird shapes.  And the one last fabric that I just couldn't make it go with anything else, I made into a bag to put the quilt in.

It's the first time I've made prairie points and they were so much fun!  I think they added lots of texture to the quilt and really finished off that central image.

I free-motion quilted it with wavy lines in the sky, grass like lines in the foreground and a line of loops and a line of flowers in the border.  I also added the child's initial, a dragonfly, a heart and a leaf into the corners for whimsy.

I changed my bobbin thread colours as I went so you would see the 'picture' on the back too.

I machine bound the edges, because I was running out of time and I think it's a stronger finish for a child's quilt.  And then, to finish it all off, I made a little doll quilt for the girl's dolls.  And I still gasp at how cute that is!  How about that striped binding?!

So there you have it.  It was a great challenge and I was incredibly nervous about whether they would like it or not, but I had a wonderful message back about how much she loved it.  Yay!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures.