Here is a cute little thing! I made this quilt as gift for my sweet nephew – who is about to turn 1!
I am entering it into The Sewing Loft Blogs September Sewing Month Gift Category. This challenge has been a fun motivation for me to finish up a bunch of projects that have been lingering – I’ve been sick for the last few months, and I really miss sewing! Now that I’m feeling better I am ready to get some quilts out the door!
Do you know who made the first bunting quilt? I’d like to know! I feel like they just sort of popped up all over the internet at once about 5 years ago, but surely someone thought of the first one.
Well, that person wasn’t me, but I have made a fair few of them in my time and I’d love to give the original person the credit! They are just perfect for weddings and baby gifts! Here is the latest.
I also wanted to share a bit on my process of making bunting flag quilts – not so much a tutorial, more of some tips and tricks.
I actually layer, baste and quilt the whole thing BEFORE adding the flags. I use a sheet for larger quilts so I can get a solid background with no interrupting seams. So for this quilt, I was just basting two totally blank sheets together! It’s very odd looking, but I think it is faster than quilting around the flags once they are sewn down and creates a nicer effect. I use an all over meander, though a grid would also look really nice, and I have done that before. It is a real challenge to get the grid to be perfectly even with no squares to go by!
Then I cut out all the flags and iron the edges under – I don’t do raw edge applique with them.
I use a bias trim maker to make the ribbon – a half inch wide – and then lay out the ribbon, criss-crossing it across the quilt till I like the lay out. then I lay down my flags and pin them into place. I quilt along the ribbon top and bottom and then around the flags.
This quilt also had a monogram added – I do this last- and I do use raw edge applique, and you can see on the back where the letters are. I don’t love the look of the backwards letters on the back of the quilt but I think it’s so much nicer to have the letters quilted and outlined.
Finally, no quilt is ready till it’s lint rolled! It’s not glamorous, but it does make a quilt look so much nicer! And a last picture of the binding. I used the Whispers by Michael Miller line and it has these lovely just off shades of clay. They look great together on the binding. This line is just perfect for a wedding quilt that will translate well into day to day life around the house I think. 
And a last look at the binding – I used
I finished this baby quilt shortly after the baby was born, but never got pictures of it. I used it as a play gym for her until recently, since she is now too grown up for play gyms! I wrote about the play gym process here – it was easy to pull off the arches and transition it into a play mat – perfect for sitting on the front porch and watching the cats.
More baby quilts! When I was a kid, I had a baby quilt with my name on it, and I LOVED THAT QUILT. So I try to always add a name onto quilts I make for kids. In this case, I was making two matching quilts for some little brothers. I struggled with the placement of the names. I had it set in my head that I had to use these dots. Now I regret the dots.
First I had just one dot, I loved the one dot, I made the quilt and it was finished. But then I thought it looked like Trumano. Not what I was going for. In retrospect, I should have, at this point, removed the dot. But it would have been a mess, as then the name would have been off center, and everything was already appliqued down with fusible webbing.
Then I thought I would add a dot on each side. but it was off center. I hated it. Two dots was worse than one!
When my Rainbow Derecho quilt got bleached, a quilting friend taught me the phrase “Applique makes it all go away” which was true in that case! I decided to try the wisdom on this little quilt. Here is a before picture, from 2011:
Years ago, I “finished” this Rainbow Derecho quilt, but was never happy with it. Here is another post about the progress of the quilt. The quilting, the puckering of the applique, the weight of it (too heavy and stiff), lots of little things. I tried to finish it in a rush and that was an important lesson learned – why rush to finish something just so you can spend years not liking it?!? 
But, I have a friend who is the perfect recipient for this quilt, and I’m moving soon and interested in off-loading a few quilts that are just gathering dust. Even though this quilt isn’t perfect, it deserves better than sitting in a box!
Oh is it not Christmastime? Consider this early for next year 🙂 For Christmas I made my four toddler aged nieces and nephews shiny satin capes.
Here are some pictures of the capes in action – I couldn’t get them to slow down to pose, so that is a good sign that they liked them!
I used the Nancy’s Notions free cape pattern which was very helpful. I believe I adapted a few things, but it’s been a few months now and I can’t remember. I had their parents measure them from shoulder to knee to figure out how long to make them. I did do some creative piecing and cutting of the satin so that I was able to get 4 capes out of 4.5 yards of fabric (for just one cape according to the pattern, you need two yards of fabric).
I went to Joann’s wondering what kind of fabric to get for kid’s capes, when lo and behold, I found “Play Satin” there! Perfect kids colors. It’s like they know that people want to make costumes for kids! It was very fussy to sew with, and I do worry about it fraying, but I tried to finish the edges with extra rows of stitching and a wider seam allowance to make them a little tougher. It would have been nice to have a working serger at that point, but in December I had a brand new broken serger (turns out there was a reason it was on the sale rack. Thanks to a great Brother Warranty, now I have a working serger!
I am normally a big fan of raw edge applique, but I knew that wouldn’t work with this low quality satin – or any satin. So I did what I’ve heard called “Dryer Sheet Applique” though i would not recommend using dryer sheets for it. Because dryer sheets can have toxic chemicals in them for one reason, and I would worry how they’d hold up over time. I used a fusible interfacing for the backing of the applique.
This satin melts with the tiniest bit of heat – I am sure you couldn’t put in the dryer – so applique was a bit of a challenge. I took some photos of my applique process in case it is helpful to anyone else who knows any little heroes!
This little quilt is made from the scraps of this very big quilt. It doesn’t really have much of a purpose, but it is so sweet and soft looking I’m sure it will find a nice use in the house.
I had all the circles in a pile. I just glued them down with a glue stick and then began quilting. I wanted it to have the frayed edges. This is how much it has frayed after one wash.
I thought about match stick quilting and also about doing a grid. But I think it has enough stitching in it for now. For the first time in many years, I didn’t do a nice double fold binding, but instead just folded over the backing and sewed it down. I didn’t square it either. If I decide someday it needs a more polished finish, I’ll do it then.
This quilt is one of my finish along quilt goals (see them all in my original post) It feels great to be finishing quilts after taking a lot of time off from sewing over the summer, as well as time spent on giant projects that take months and months. Speaking of, quilting the giant monsters are next on my list. Yikes!
In the meantime, I love to applique baby names onto quilts! I had a quilt with a D (for Dana) when I was little and just loved it!
For more info on my letter applique process, you can check out my monogram tutorial. For these two quilts, I used a raw edge applique and free-motion quilted down the edges. I used three trips around each letter for a sketched look, and a more secure finish.
My favorite baby font for quilt is Winnie the Hoop, which I discovered on How About Orange, you can download it for free here.
About two years ago, I made a fall snowball quilt, and had a bunch of HST’s leftover after trimming my blocks. So I pieced them into an awkward shaped block of chevrons. It then seemed impossible to me how to finish the quilt.
Then last week I was sorting through some Works in Progress (sooo manyyyy) and in a flash decided I would add a strip of white and an applique patchwork fox. I had a free moment so got started immediately.
And Done! I have traced the applique with basic instructions for anyone that may want to make their own Fox Patchwork Applique here is the pdf . It is a VERY basic pattern, let me know if you have any questions. The fox finished at about 13×17 at the widest area, so you could easily make one with a fat quarter if you don’t like it pieced.
