Doll Quilt Swap 13 - Received!

I had a lovely mail day yesterday! I came home from a Bible Study I've started attending on Wed mornings to see the mail man walking up the street away from my house. I ran into the house, curious to see if it would be the day of the Doll Quilt. And it was! This is the lovely package I got from Emily (simple life, simple girl):

quilt, lovely scraps, a vintage button, a card and two rolls of washi tape

I had requested something colourful and whimsical and happy. And this quilt is all of those. It has my favorite combination of colours, it is beautifully pieced and quilted, and there are fun little details in the fabrics - mice and bees and flowers hiding among the dots.

Here it is all laid out - isn't it amazing? One thing I love about quilt swaps is that you often get something that you love, but could never make for yourself. This is a stunning little quilt, and I could never make it for myself, as I'm not super good at hand work.

I decided that it needed to hang in our hallway to ward off the winter blues. My quilt wall is being taken down so I can repaint (the lower half of the wall suffers from being behind the table on the side where the boys eat, and the wall next to it suffers from an over enthusiastic art experiment involving a brown ink pad).

I think it is the perfect size for this spot, don't you?

Owls in the Cupboard - My Finished Doll Quilt

In the last week or so, I have been busy working away on the doll quilt that was due in the mail today. I decided to do a variation of something I have done in the past that was popular and fun to make: teacups.

I started out with this sketch, way back in Novemeber, when the swap first started. I was going to make the teacups and applique these little birds on.

 I was sketching late at night, and as you can see, the birds weren't sure why they were on the mugs - and neither was I. Although I realize that a whimsical quilt is just that, whimsical, inconsequential things bother me. I really wanted to give the birds a reason to be sitting en masse on teacups.

 So, I decided that maybe some of the birds were ON the teacups, and some were free, and it would be like a joke, like the free birds were trying to get the birds off the teacups. Or like there would be all teacups and one bird in the middle of them - one unexpected free peiced bird in the midst of the teacups with birds on them. So I started making cups and mugs.

 And then I made a few more, and a bird to go with them.

 As I progressed, however, it seemed that a log cabin was called for. To quote the great artist Winnie the Pooh, "It wanted to come in after the [red mug] so I let it". (speaking of which, if you have kids and you like to play them stories, you really must get the cds of Stephen Fry and Judy Dench and a bunch of other brilliant British actors reading Winnie the Pooh - they bring out all the comedy perfectly, my kids love them, and I don't mind listening to them a hundred times because the characters are so well done). In any case, I kept playing, adding owls when I could and eventually, a second bird and then a final mug. This was my first time working with text prints as a background to anything, and I must say I love the final result. The only thing that was tricky was balancing out the quilt - some of the prints I chose as my lights were very light, while some were more medium. This meant I had to be careful with my final layout.

Eventually, I ended up with this fun little nine patch quilt. I didn't have a lot of time for complex quilting, and I was really taken by svetlana's quilting on this quilt, so I decided to do something similar on my quilt.

I also quilted around the teacups and birds in matching thread so that they would stand out a bit more against the background. I must say, these owls just make me laugh - they are kind of funny and creepy and cute all at once.

I bound the quilt with a black-on-black print I've had in my stash forever, wrote a label of sorts on the back, and popped it in the mail.

I love this quilt, and would have gladly hung it on my own wall. I hope my partner likes it just as much or more than I do. I may have to make myself something similar, except I only had a scrap of the owl fabric, so I will have to find some other weird animals or people to go on my mugs . . . hmmm, we'll see.

Fab Little Quilt Sent!

Okay, finally the post about my finished Fab Little Quilt! I sent this quilt almost a month ago now, but I haven't had the time to do a real post about it. When we last saw this little quilt it was just pieced together. My partner really loves dense quilting, and had a lot of favorites with just that featured. So I did a lot of free motion quilting - I used three or more bobbins of thread on a quilt that is only 15 x 20". The grassy fields were quilted with tiny little blades of grass, and one tiny flower.

The sky's quilting mirrors two of the swirly patterns in the sky, while the grey "clouds" have a looser cloud pattern.

The sun, of course, has some sun rays quilted in it.

With the quilt bound in a scrappy binding that almost mirrored the lines in the picture quilt (so as to keep the wonky improv theme in the binding), and a tiny cycling mouse (courtesy of Heather Ross' Nursery Versery) appliqued on the back, the quilt was finished! I literally stitched the last of the binding on the morning of the mailing deadline, and sent this quilt to my partner in the afternoon.

Here is the label. As you can see, my partner's flikr name is Quilting Cyclist, which made the mouse print perfect for the label. That is, of course, me wearing my baby, chatting with Mona, ready to hop on her bike!

Mona received her quilt super fast - within a week - and she really loved it. I was so happy to make something that cheered her up so much. For me, that is what swaps are about - sending a little piece of joy and happiness in the mail to someone far away. This was a fun swap and I once more enjoyed creating a tiny quilt for someone else.

Fab Little Quilt Received!

The very same day that I sent out my Fab Little Quilt, the postman knocked on my door and passed me a parcel (I do wonder what he thinks of all my squishy envalopes somedays). Inside it was this terribly exciting little quilt!

 

Cindy made this quilt just for me - like, really for me. She read and asked about and thought through my discussion about deconstruction and reconstruction and my love of all things cute a whimsical, and worked way, way outside of her normal quilting box to produce the amazing little quilt you see above.

Cindy sent me a note to say that the four little birds are my children, and the orange bird is the mama - me! What a lovely sentiment. All the special details and care put into this quilt made me a little weepy on the day that I got it, frankly. I was having a hard day, and this quilt really perked me up.

But enough about me - back to this fabulous quilt:

This little quilt is so fun! The birds are all removable and pinned to the back with safety pins. They can tuck into the yarn covered nest (which is a pocket) or be pinned anywhere else on the quilt. Right now, on my wall, I have one bird out on the top branch and three in the nest.

These leaves are double sided and stitched carefully in place down the middle so that they are also three dimensional and look like "real" leaves.  The quilting is a lovely all over leafy pattern. Cindy is a professional long arm quilter, and it shows in this quilt. Finally, the label:

A little wink to my request for something deconstructed, and to her work playing with a collage-like sky and leafy background to the quilt!

 

If that wasn't enough, she send me a cute little card, three fat quarters (two of which are already in use, Cindy) and a magnetized notepad (right as I had been thinking, "I wish I had another magnetized notepad to write grocery lists on . . . )! They were all tied up with this cute little piece of bias tape which my daughter promptly stole.

This quilt is now hanging on my quilt wall, well out of reach of any little fingers that might want to swipe all those sweet birds! Thanks so much for this darling quilt, Cindy! Every time I see it I smile.