Saturday Quilt Day

I got a lot done on the Doll Quilt Swap project today. The pattern is the Chinese Coins variation Pieces of Eight. The fabrics are Amy Butler Daisy Chain line. I love these colors together and think this is turning out very nicely. It does not have to be finished until the beginning of September, but since school is starting again soon, I wanted to get a move on.

Doll Quilt Update

I have not had a lot of time recently to work on the Doll Quilt for DQS7. I planned to make a applique quilt using circles of various sizes. I picked out some prints, cut some circles in both the fabric and the Seam2Seam fusible web. I made a practice top by fusing the circles to a background fabric and pinning it to some of my usual batting (Warm and Natural.) So far so good.


Then I started to practice machine applique with the satin stitch. No good. I tried several times and turned to the Internet for help. I found some good tutorials for doing machine applique. Another thing I have found is that if you search Google Books, often times you will get an ebook as a result, which you can read parts of. The book I found last night had several chapters available and some good tips.


I worked some more this afternoon on the practice quilt and while I was a little more successful, I am afraid I do not have time to get good at this before the mailing deadline. And the stress of trying to make a nice quilt for my swap partner using techniques that are unfamiliar to me is not helpful when I have to go back to WORK next week. :(

(I am not really sad about going back to work, just nervous about the start of a new school year.)


So around 6:00 p.m. I decided to make the kind of quilt I know how to make. I have started a lovely Chinese Coin Quilt using Amy Butler fabrics. Last weekend my aunt who also quilts gave me 2 bagfuls of scraps of leftover fabric from projects she recently completed. I almost swooned over the Amy Butler Daisy Chain fabrics. All good sized scraps, including a couple of yards of one print. She is a good and generous soul.


So the new quilt top is nearly finished (just the top, not any of the quilting.) I think I am going to make a pieced binding with more scraps and back it with some of the yardage. I am feeling way more comfortable about how this is going to turn out. The most important thing is that it looks nice, not that I try new techniques. I can try new techniques on things for myself.

Doll Quilt Swap

I have signed up for a doll quilt swap on Flickr. Go here if you want to see some of the beautiful small quilts that people have made and swapped in the past.

No, I don't play with dolls, nor do I have a girl child to supply with doll quilts. Neither do most of the people who do these quilts. Doll quilts are small, can be finished much more easily and quickly than bed sized quilts and offer their makers chances to try out new techniques on a small scale. They also look great as wall art!

I have made a couple of practice quilts to get ready for the swap. Here they are.

The first is the leftover block from the pieces of eight quilt. Since taking this photo I have completed this block with a binding that is the same as the backing fabric.

The last two photos show a disappearing 9 patch quilt. It is about 23 inches square. These three different fabrics are all blocks cut from vintage sheets. I got these on Etsy from a lady that sells an assortment of fatquarters, 6 inch and 12 inch pre-cut blocks from vintage sheets. I got some wonderful squares, ready to sew with.

I quilted the three layer sandwich with red, white and blue thread in wonky diagonal lines. The center photo shows what it looked like after quilting, but before trimming and binding. I have to say that one of the attractions of doing the doll quilts is that they are easy to maneuver under the machine when you are quilting.