The Sewing Mom

I got busy this weekend, maybe the fact the we finally had some beautiful weather, the wind wasn’t howling, and we had a day off from work and softball. Not sure, but all those things combined got me to be productive! I spent several hours working outside on the landscaping, pulling weeds, mulching, trimming bushes and what not. Finally, after getting myself cleaned up, I managed to get the outside borders sewn onto Nana’s Garden, so I have a finished quilt top. Of course, I still have to buy the backing fabric and quilt it, but that will come…

I purchased this quilt as a kit, so I am limited on fabric and therefore need to be very careful in my cutting and sewing.

I began by successfully cutting all of the fabric into appropriate squares and rectangles. The first step in sewing was to create the upper wings of the butterfly. This was accomplished by sewing small squares to the upper inside corners of the larger colorful rectangles. The squares were then trimmed off and pressed.

More to follow…

These are the fabrics I am using to create a “butterfly” quilt. The backgrounds are all a neutral white and the butterfly wings are all bright, vivid colors. I managed to get the top wings all ready, but I screwed up the bottom wings, they are all facing only one direction and they need to be going in opposite directions. Ahhh, well, no quilt is handmade without a mistake or two!

I am limited on the fabric so I can either completely redo the bottom wings which will take much more time, or, I can attempt to find the exact fabric and purchase more to fix my errors. I am trying to find the exact fabric, it will be less time consuming!

More pictures to follow, I am trying to do a picture diary of this quilt.

I am participating in a Quilt Tree and am looking for more who would like to participate.  If you would like to participate, leave me a comment so I can contact you for your mailing address.  Participants receive the following letter along with two 6″ fabric charm squares:

Purple Charm Quilt

This is a Quilt Tree.  No money involved – just fun for everyone.

Please send two 6″ squares  to the first person on the list (list of names & addresses will be on actual letter).  The fabric may be plaid, check, print or solid, but it must be PURPLE and 100% cotton.

Remove the name you sent the fabric squares to from the top of the list and put your name and address as the next name.  Make 4 copies of the letter and send them to 4 quilting friends alond with two 6″ squares of your choice of PURPLE fabric in each letter.

All together you should receive 72 squares in return, if no one breaks the chain.  This will be enough to make a charm quilt.  It will be fun to see where the squares come from and to see what they will look like together.

My step-daughter is pregnant with her 2nd baby and I am sewing a baby quilt for her. I started on another pattern, one with butterfly designs, but I screwed up the butterfly tails! I do plan on fixing my mistake, but, I am sort of under a time crunch with the baby being due in June, and it’s going to take me some time to fix my flub. So, I ran across this beautiful fabric and decided to make this quilt instead. Truthfully, I’m liking it even more for a baby than the one I was working on!

The fabric and pattern are both called Nana’s Garden. It is comprised of various width fabric strips with a narrow border to create a rectangle. I then machine appliqued the flowers and bunny to the top. I have a wider border ready to be sewn on and then it’s ready to be quilted.