Amelia's Quilt Pillowcase

I almost forgot. I did make a pillowcase to match Amelia's quilt and I've since learnt that she loves it so much that it's turned into a traveller, ie if she hops into mummy's bed, pillow comes too. So cute.

I used raw edge applique for the heart and butterfly and hand stitched the antenae.

And finally...Amelia's Quilt

Next Steph and I pieced the backing using fabrics from the flowers, hearts and butterflies and arranged in an off-centre cross.

I then sandwiched the quilt using cotton batting, basted it with thread and quilted it with an all over loop and heart design.

So as to not detract from the quilt I used the same pale pink background fabric for the binding which I machine sewed on and then Steph and I hand sewed to finish it. And I think I've dragged this out long enough...here it is.

Our market debut that didn't

We said from the start that we'd be honest so how did our first market go? Well, it didn't. We felt in the end that we wouldn't have enough stock to display and Amelia's quilt took up a lot of time which could have been spent sewing other items. In the end we would have been sorely disappointed anyway had we busted our butts to get there as the organiser hadn't done much advertising so hardly anyone knew the market was on and many stall holders packed up halfway through the market which was a real shame.

So in this one case it may have been to our favour to miss this opportunity as it made us reassess where we want this business to go and what we want out of it. We always said that if it felt like a chore then it wasn't worth doing and this market definitely fell into that category.

As it stands right now, Steph has done a brilliant job sewing all the play placemat sets which are ready for sale and are waiting for me to put them in our etsy store. I'm hesitating (read: procrastinating) over postage costs as I want to charge only what it would cost to send yet Australia Post's online calculator is a pain to use. Keeps quoting me ridiculous amounts so it looks like I'll have to get down to the post office for a quote. And I've completed only 2 aprons - the rest are waiting for assembly. When I get my sewing mojo back the rest will sew up quickly.

In the meantime life goes on and we do what we can when we can.

I knew I forgot something

I found my way back finally. Sorry, how rude of me to not finish the reveal. I can fix that...

Trapunto.

I basted small off-cut pieces of batting behind each flower - I found it easier to baste with thread rather than pins so it was guaranteed to lay flat and smooth

and then free motion stitched a line close to the edges of the petals (aka raw edge applique) and also in the centre of the flowers. I stitched a spiral here but other flowers had hearts or pebbles stitched in the centre.

I then flipped the quilt top over and carefully cut away the excess batting as close to the line of stitching as I dared without cutting into the fabric.

I did the same for each heart and butterfly except for the three large hearts which were attached by needle-turn appliqued and have 2 layers of batting behind them for the trapunto. These were stitched close to the edge on the background fabric rather than on the applique fabric and I was really happy how they appeared to pop out of the quilt. I also used needle-turn applique to attach the caterpillar segments and added 2 layers of batting for the trapunto there too.

Then to finish off the butterflies I hand stitched the antenna with chain stitch, backstitch or stem stitch. The one above was done with chain stitch.

Slowly coming together

Isn't this a gorgeous font for Amelia's name? I thought so too and then found out that it's actually Liz's, Amelia's mum, normal handwriting. I scaled it up from the quilt draft that Liz and I put together and transfered it to the paper side of fusible webbing (in reverse) before ironing it to the chosen fabric, a hot pink squiggle from Spotlight. Here it is laid out to check placement before finally ironing it onto the quilt front.

Whenever I wasn't able to spread out and take over my dinner table or living room floor, I worked on the caterpillar pieces that needed hand sewing.

I drew on the caterpillars legs with my water erasable Clover pen

and then fused on little ovals of black velvet for the feet. Later I will free motion stitch the leg line and around the raw edges of the foot with matching black thread.

Next onto the flower vine. I drew in the vinework and pinned in templates of all the leaves.

Then I fussy cut all the leaves from 3 different fabrics and roughly cut them out before pinning them in place. Again I wanted to see them all in place before committing to ironing everything permanently.

Once all the leaves were ironed on I stitched in the vine lines and secured all the leaves by sewing around all the edges.

Construction begins

It begins with templates - a LOT of templates. I drafted lots of flowers, butterflies and hearts in varying sizes on paper and then made cardboard templates of each one.

I also made a number of photocopies of the shapes which I roughly cut out and used to help with placement of them on the quilt.

While I could have simply ironed the fabric to the fusible webbing for most of the shapes without first having an idea where they'd wind up in the quilt, I found it was really important to plan carefully with the caterpillar and surrounding flowers, particularly since they had to fit in a tighter formation and because I would have stitching connecting all the flowers and leaves.

I pinned all my paper shapes in place and then hung the quilt front from my curtain tracks to create an oversized design board.

I traced all the shapes in reverse onto the paper side of fusible webbing and roughly cut them out outside the lines. Next I used my cardboard templates so that I could visualise how the final shape would look, in particular the butterflies and flowers, before ironing the fusible webbing in place.

As I each fabric was selected, fused and fussy cut, it was pinned in place on the quilt front so that I could step back and look at the quilt from a distance to check that the colours weren't bunched or if this area needed more pink or purple to balance things. It was only after all the pieces were in place that they were ironed on.

Pink and purple explosion

It's been pedal to the metal here for the last month constructing Amelia's King Single bed quilt so to catch up...

...the custom made apron was a big hit with little Amelia

and then there was an explosion of pink and purple as well as some textured coloured fabrics for the caterpillar, as I collected fabrics for her King Single quilt.

The main fabric for the front and back was a pale pink homespun from Lincraft (bottom of the left pile). The right pile of various quilting weight cotton fabrics made up the hearts, butterflies, flowers and vine leaves that were appliqued on (sourced from Fabric Shack, eQuilter and my own stash). The textured caterpillar was made of (left pile, from top to bottom) gold metal trim on a yellow marble cotton print, orange gathered organza trim on orange homespun, lilac crystal organza with a pink poplin base, royal purple long-haired chiffon with a purple homespun base (not shown), spotted emerald green tulle with a green homespun base, pink soft tulle with hot pink sequins on a hot pink homespun base, and blue crushed velvet (all from Spotlight or Lincraft).