Making Squirrels

This is the current state of my work table. I have reached a place on my vine and leaves where I really need to add the squirrels to determine where they will fit and what branches and leaves will go around them. I was making great progress appliqueing the vines and leaves till I hit this roadblock. So This past week has been all about these two squirrels. When you design everything yourself you have to do lots of work and research to find the image, draw it, tweak, it and tweak it more, again, and again till it works. I found images on the internet and got to drawing but they did not look right. I had my artist daughter help and then they were better but looked more like dragonlike cartoon features (she draws that style). Well now I had the proportions right and kept drawing. I had pages of squirrels till I finally settled on these two. The one on the too is pretty easy and is ready to be appliqued down, the bottom one is much more complicated and I am still tweaking.

I made templates for the outline and this is the starting point. I have simplified the idea and some of the lines will be defined with quilting instead of different parts. This is a process of designing as you go. I am pretty happy so far with how they are coming together and hope to finish the second squirrel this week and get them appliqued on the quilt.

This is a little preview of where the first squirrel will go. There will be lots of branches and leaves added before he is appliqued down but at least now I can figure out that design.

Here is the placement for the four applique creatures. The squirrel on the top right will be behind the vine so that is why he is so problematic to figure out. I am making progress with his design though.

Time Sink

Ok what have I done to myself! I finished my last forever applique project last fall, and there will be photos of that very soon. When I did my scrap bin frenzy during my 2017 Summer in Oregon I was cutting and sorting fabrics for several quilts including triangles and made this tree of life setting. Well I could not just leave it at that. I knew that a vine border with leaves and a few critters would take the quilt to another level so I had been planning that vine since I set the blocks and the outer border with enough space to put the vine. I spent quite some time fiddling with the line the vine would travel last fall. I thought I had fabric for the vine that was already made into a bias strip but when I laid it on the quilt it was just too thick. I headed to the quilt store and bought yardage of a beautiful deep forest green grunge fabric and cut bias strips 5/8" wide. I then put off making the long strip needed to go all the way around the quilt for the vine because I knew it would be fussy. Well I finally decided I just needed to get that going so a week ago I pulled it out and sewed the strips together by hand because being so narrow they needed to be dead on perfect. I spent a good chunk of time pulling that long strip thru my bias maker, slowly carefully wrapping it around an empty toilet paper roll. Now with that step done I basted the vine around the border along the line I had drawn last fall................ok looking good!

The next step was to figure out where the leaves and side branches would go. I had a sticky note pad sitting around that was green so I cut two sizes of leaf shapes. The branches are scraps from the pants I just finished sewing and drapey poly fabric so I just cut some strips and used them for placement. I really liked where this is going.

 

Next I pulled out the bag of green scraps I have been collecting for a couple of years and got leaves cut out and placed over the paper. Yep I really like where this is going!

I spent some time googling birds and decided to put a mountain bluebird on the top of the quilt, and a western bluebird on the bottom. I drew these birds freehand from photographs and now need to pull fabric and get them made up. I am going to use brighter fabrics than what I have here. I just colored my line drawings with colored pencils I had to see how they looked. I am going to try to focus on getting as much applique done this Summer as I can. The thing is that this project is now taking all my sewing time and is quite the time sink. It is fun to see it slowly change and evolve as I go.

T-shirt Quilt

This quilt top has been two years in the making. The t-shirts belonged to Toni the wife of my ex boss. She was an amazing person. One of those people that was just plain fun to have around. After she passed away suddenly I told her husband Dean that I would like to make a t-shirt quilt for him. Well things in my life were in constant flux and I was moving around a good deal, living in the RV in 5 different states. I trimmed the t-shirts right after I got them and put them in a project bag with the fusible interfacing and it traveled around with me. It kept nagging at me to get it started.

Every February I go to a quilt retreat every year in Phoenix Arizona. I decided that my main project would be to get a start on this quilt. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought yardage of blue Kona cotton for the sashing and the border. I also got a yard of yellow Kona cotton for an accent. I now had everything I needed to bring this to the retreat.

My friend Cathy had done a t-shirt quilt recently and she was sitting near me so I decided to just ask her to give me the inspiration to begin. Her suggestion was to arrange the pieces up on the design wall and figure out what would go where. After some time I can up with this as a beginning. Things moved around as the design evolved but at least I had a plan. Cathy's biggest piece of advice was to start with a column so I began in the center.

 

The top center quilt was a giant wolf face. I guess it must have been Toni's favorite because it had holes in it. The area around the wolfs mussel was not only full of holes but really worn thin so I decided to just trim that off and cut right above the holes. There was a polyester nightgown that had sleepy bears with a pink background. I thought it would be fun to incorporate the nightgown into the design sprinkled around the quilt. I began by cutting out a bear and backed the fabric with interfacing to give it a bit of stability. Then came the tiny pinwheel which set the stage for more pinwheels and pops of yellow. I started at the top and worked down adding a few fun elements like the yellow strips to the sashing in the two blocks near the bottom and a little border of the pink nightgown to the cow at the bottom. That little border around the cow took quite some fiddling and quite a chunk of time. Once I had the center column I packed this project up to finish at home. I pulled it back out during quarantine and was determined to get it finished.

 

There was a baseball cap with the t-shirts and this was the hardest thing to figure out. I cut the plane out the best I could. 

 

There was foam on the back and it was all fused together so separating all of the layers was not going to happen. I finally decided to frame it in an oval shape as there was not enough for a rectangle around it.

 

I made a paper template and trimmed it into an oval shape. I needleturned the oval cutout to the plane piece.

I was very pleased with the final result!

I just laid it all out on the bed and decided to work on the right column next. I added more pops of the yellow fabric and some more of the pink nightgown.

With the yellow I just looked at what I had and tried to sprinkle pops of yellow around the quilt and do similar things to what I had already done. The little squares here are an example. They mirror the squares on the motorcycle block.

I worked on the left column balancing elements that I had done on the right side.

I finally got the columns done and needed a bit more yellow accent but not too much for the final border. Humm.............more pinwheels. I decided to just sew them up and see how they looked. I spent a lovely morning enjoying the view out of the widow chain sewing them in three sizes.

The moment of truth had arrived and I previewed the pinwheels on the top right and bottom left. Yep I really loved how that looked. Just enough to draw the eye across the quilt but still very simple and not fussy.

I will definitely use this border idea again for future quilts. I really love the asymmetry. It also mirrors the little squares around the motorcycle and chocolate world blocks.

And then for the back. Everything was shut down and I did not want to rely on mail order for fabric that might be out of stock or take weeks to arrive so I dug thru the small amount of fabric stash I had with me in quarantine. Most of my fabric was back up in the RV in Colorado. I found a large piece of batik but it was just not big enough. Humm...............maybe piece some big blocks in the back to get just that little extra I needed. I had pinwheels on the front so dug thru the stash some more and found a few extra pieces that were large enough to cut giant triangles. I just worked one step at a time with the fabric and did not cut out all the pieces in advance. In the end I had only scraps of the big piece left. I always like fun backs and am pleased with how this turned out.

Now the next step is quilting and binding. I have already made the binding so once the quilting is done I can get that on. My quilt machine is up in Colorado and we are in New Mexico for a few more weeks. We are planning on going back up to Colorado in a few weeks so this quilt just needs to wait a little longer for the finish but at least the hard part is done. For me quilting is my happy place so once I get this on the machine it will be fun!