Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The Road To Heck

I always have good intentions at least when it comes to my quilting.

I thought I might share with you how I usually make a quilt. I pulled this fabric from my stash to make a child's quilt. It's a border fabric, so I need to plan just the center.


I like the purple elephant, so I thought I'd make an appliqued elephant.


Cute, I added the leaves and grass and now I need to do some basic borders/frames. I'm thinking of half square triangles in the bright colors from the border fabric.
Tip: I can draw, but if it gets too big it starts to lose it's dimensions. So I take a picture, use Picassa and crop it into four pieces and print it. If you crop it a little big than quarters you can overlap and join the lines when you have your 4 pieces.


I made the triangles and it makes me dizzy it's so bright and there is too much going on, so I added this lavender polka dot fabric and at this point the half triangles I had made are in the "some day I'll use these" bag. So now I'm making a wall hanging. I felt like it needed something else, but nothing was working. It's still cute and I give up. I cut the backing fabric and go to the machine to piece two left over pieces of batting. When I get back this is what I see.


The backing fabric is just what he needed! So now I need to find other backing (I didn't have enough of this), more batting and here he is finished.


My quilt turned into a wall hanging, I used none of the original fabric, I cut backing and batting twice and I have a bunch of bright blocks to be used elsewhere. I call my style "one step forward, three steps back". He is cute and after washing, he wrinkled up in a perfect elephant skin way. I'm happy with him. I wish I had planned him this way.

Thanks for stopping by,
Dana

4 comments:

  1. Love him...so much personality. I think you just follow your instinct with this and it was a good thing. Bright triangles....pinwheels in a border. Once you do an all over quilting design you will be surprised how much they soften in color.

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  2. Love him...but I wish I could draw! I would love to make fun things like this!

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  3. Awww, he's great. I missed what happened with the border print though? Surely that will make a great quilt too? ;-)

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