Sunday, October 12, 2008

Tropical quilt


Ever since I took the quilting class, I've been planning on making a quilt for Mya's room. When I was pregnant with Mya, I designed her room so that she could grow into it and not have it be so baby-ish. I made all the crib bedding and matching curtains. Now that she moved on to a "big girl" bed, she didn't have any coordinating bedding. I did a search and found that comforters (especially quilts) ran around $100. I was on a mission to beat that price by doing myself.

I found a quilt that I liked online and based the layout after it. I wanted to add my personal touch with some appliqué work. Thom and Mya flew out of town for a week to visit Grammy and I worked on the quilt and pillow sham for 5 days straight. It was really fun to do. I learned a lot while making this quilt:
  1. Fat batting = pin closer together (I had a lot of bunching in a few places - the top was not taut enough)
  2. Quilting with a darning foot and dropped feed dogs is a balance between the speed of the needle and speed of the fabric
  3. Quilting uses A LOT of thread
  4. A lead pencil is sometimes better than the water-soluble pencils when drawing on your quilt.
  5. Using a zigzagger on straight-stitch machine can make you dizzy.
  6. The ripper is my best friend

Here's a shot of the appliqué work. I zigzagged around all the appliqués since it would have taken me forever to hand-stitch it. There's a bird of paradise, a nipa hut (my homage to the "bahay kubo" in the Philippines), a tropical leaf, plumerias, and bamboo. On the side is a butterfly and a palm tree with the sun setting behind it.

By the way, material cost me $65. Extra thread and bobbins - $6. Time and effort - priceless :) .

No comments: