Monday, February 11, 2013

Putting QFC Quilt Tops Together for Missouri Boy's Home...

Remember a few weeks ago when I posted that I had received some gorgeous embroidered quilt blocks in the mail from one of our talented QFC members?  I was in the middle of trying to finish up Bonnie Hunter's annual Mystery Quilt  and Jungle Elephant batik gift quilt, w/flu delays along the way, (I had to put the Mystery Quilt on hold for the time being to honor my previous commitments, no worries - I'll be back to it soon enough).

Well after agonizing just how I was going to put these blocks together in two different quilts (and being re-visited by this blamed flu/cold AGAIN), I finally got some renewed inspiration (after watching 'Funny Valentine'), and energy, (after a nice hot shower), and got these two pieced together:

Horse embroidered blocks mixed with plaid/red/green pieced blocks
I will be tea-dye painting the quilting in the outside muslin borders to blend w/rest of quilt

I've experienced alot of firsts with the ladies over at Quilters For Comfort, and quilting this particular quilt top will be another one!  While putting these blocks together, I discovered the red squares are actually comprised of red stretchy corduroy.  Betty and I have quilted many different types of fabrics, including wools, batiks, and even some really neat vintage fabrics, but NEVER stretchy corduroy!  Betty loves a good challenge - and so do I, we'll give it our best and post our results later when we've finished up ;-)

There were enough leftover fabrics, along w/some of mine to make all the quilt binding:



 and while I was at it, went ahead and embroidered the QFC quilt label:

I think this one will turn out really neat, long as I don't have any significant issues w/red stretchy corduroy!

Next on our quilting agenda is this cute child's quilt made out of those adorable appliqued animal blocks - remember that smiling monkey?  I was stuck for awhile on how to finish this one since I only had enough to make filler blocks w/extra fabric that was generously sent along w/the embroidered/appliqued blocks.  Then I remembered this yummy cheddar fabric I had recently ordered from Moda.  This cheddar was originally destined for my in-progress bow tie quilt to make more cheddar bow ties, but the color lot was off a bit and I was hesitant to try and use it in my bow tie quilt - works great in the border of this quilt though, don't you think?

The fabrics and blocks in this quilt help keep it gender-neutral - 
making it a perfect quilt for one of QFC's multitude of projects...

Both of these tops include directional fabrics as well, so had to pay particular attention to that while piecing them together.  There was also one block in the horse quilt that was not pieced like the others and I didn't pick up on it until after I had put the entire top together so just left it for interest and intrigue, (can you find it?).  

I had to rip a couple of blocks and restitch due to the red stretchy corduroy 'stretching' beyond intersection points, but finally figured out to put the 'stretchy' next to my machine's feed dogs, (a dressmaking technique), and ease in any fullness.  And because corduroy's wales want to scoot, the feed dogs help with that, too.  I probably should have put on my Juki's even feed foot, but I didn't feel like digging it out - I knew my cold meds were about to wear off and didn't want to waste precious moments 'digging' when I could be sewing!

I'm off to load the horse quilt top and get busy quilting - I'm trying out some new machine quilting LAVA thread from Superior and I'm anxious to get going...

Superior's LAVA in the color Sand Bar - 
I think it will run nicely on this horse quilt

UPDATE 3/1/2013:  curious to see how both quilts quilted out - check out Quilting the QFC Horse Quilt and Quilting QFC #2 Boy's Home Quilt aka Jungle Animal quilt


Later,
~Deb

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