Tag Archives: gift quilt

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This quilt was kind of three and a half years in the making, and also less than a day. This week's one-week Project QUILTING challenge is Fussy Cut! Like the last PQ challenge I challenged myself to a modern traditional design using a traditional block as a jumping off point. The most popular response to my instagram poll indicated Churn Dash as the favorite traditional block. That made me think of one of the first quilts I ever made.

I planned to start early in the week. (Don't I always?) And then I found myself without a stitch sewn on Friday night. I had a rough plan and had selected some fabric... 3 1/2 years ago. Way back in 2017 my friend Lorinda was hosting Color Play Friday. Each week she gave us a prompt and this fabric pull is from the week of Willy Wonka. I liked it so much I could never bring myself to put the fabrics back in my stash with their color companions, instead leaving this little pile together on the shelf this whole time. When I had a bit of a design plan, I opened the cabinet to find some fussy cuttable fabric. After picking out a couple potential options I didn't really love, my eye landed on this pile. Voila!

Fussy cutting is selecting a specific part of the fabric often used to isolate a particular motif, but it can be used to feature a particular section of a design based on color or directionality of the print. It can be a very effective design element. Sometimes fussy cutting means using the unicorn. Sometimes fussy cutting means avoiding the unicorn.

So after 4pm yesterday with less than 18 hours until the deadline I cut my first pieced of fabric and sewed my first stitches. After breaks for assisting my son with cooking dinner and having dinner with my family I resumed sewing. I finished up just before midnight and stayed up even later to photograph, blog, and linkup. There are already over 170 finished projects linked up for the week. Be sure to hop over and check them out! And mark your calendar to join us for the next Project QUILTING challenge starting on January 31.

The outer edges of both of these fabrics are the on grain. I chose this angle as a means to fussy cut to feature the flowers in the HSTs. You can see the HST unit after I trimmed it to size below in the bottom left.

Since these fabrics were from my Willy Wonka fabric pull, I chose to use the brown and gold as chocolate bars with a bit of golden ticket peeking out.

I opted for a pillowcase binding and minimal echo quilting in Aurifil 50wt. Chocolate (#2360) on the chocolate bars and Dark Violet (#2582) on the background. It finished at 16" x 16" -- I've Got a Golden Ticket!

Thanks for visiting! Check out all the other fussy cutting that went on this week on Kim's Project QUILTING linkup.

I'm also linking up with my linkup, Show Me Something. ;-)

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Yesterday, about seven hours before my brother arrived for his birthday dinner, I finished his quilt. I finished his quilt that I started for him in 2004. Let's just take a second to put that in perspective. That was before I lived in this house. In fact, it was two homes ago. It was before I had kids. It was before I was married. It was before I had even met my husband. Yeah, basically, I was a completely different person back then. The single, middle school math teacher, who really didn't have much time for her newish quilting hobby.

baseball quilt

Oh, and by the way, I actually gave my brother this quilt as a Christmas present in 2004 (photo above). I think that was his Junior year of high school. I wrapped up about eight finished blocks for his gift and then "was going to finish it up for him." See, he even tried them on. And fake slept. ;-) Well, here we are, twelve years later. I know there are people with WIPs older than mine, but come on. They are snowball blocks. I've completed over 40 quilts (granted, many of them mini quilts) since I started his. Sheesh!

I'm thrilled to have finally finished this gift for him. I'm also relieved to not have the weight of a twelve-year-old WIP on me. I haven't yet determined what my next oldest WIP is, the quilt that will now fill that taunting role in my life. It's just better not to know. ;-)

While I was working to quilt it in the last few days, my son came in and asked me what I was doing. Now, he's a quilter. He knew I was quilting the quilt. I was confused. It turns out, what he wanted to know was what patterns I was quilting. He said he thought I would be quilting baseball players and baseballs and stuff. (The kid clearly thinks my free motion skills are beyond where they are.) So together we joked that maybe we could find some parts that looked like players in my meandering quilting. Here's what he, my sister and I came up with:

Player fielding a ground ball:

Pitcher:

Catcher:

Runner:

 

The back is simple. I used up the last of my baseball mitt fabric. (The last of the red baseball fabric went on the back of my daughter's first quilt.) and I snuck in some of the red fabric that I used when I made my kids' baseball clothes.

 

Here's the 58" x 83" quilt all washed and crinkly, just in time to give to Chris.

 

 

My son excitedly helped deliver the gift.

I named this quilt Finally. I'm glad that got a chuckle from Chris when he received it. He also appreciated that my label has washing instructions on it. :-)

Happy 28th Birthday, Chris!

I'm linking up to the Q3 Finish Along finishes party. See all my Q3 WIPs in my goal post.

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