Wednesday, January 20, 2010

watermelon baby quilt



aryn's done it again. she created this beautiful quilt top - in watermelon colors - for our friend claire's newly arrived baby, celia. celia arrived early and healthy, six weeks early in fact, so the quilt wasn't quite ready for her upon arrival. but with a little pushing it was ready for her baby shower - which turned out to also be a celebration of her one month birthday.



i love aryn's choice of fabrics and combination of colors. so well done. she hired me to do the assembling, quilting and finishing parts of the quilt, which was fun for me. baby quilts are a great size to work with! i want to make only baby quilts from now on. so all you people who are waiting for your wedding presents from me... take note.




i wanted to do something subtle since the pattern of the fabrics is so vibrant on its own, so i did some stitching in the ditch around all the blocks and then chose one of the stripes of fabric in each square to do some stippling on - in corresponding pink or green thread. i think it came out really nicely - it's subtle on the front but allows some of the pieces to pop out, and the back is a fun maze of swirls and lines.



for the binding i split the difference between aryn's method and mine - she does a turn over of the backing fabric and machine stitching; i do a bias tape binding and finish it by hand. So i turned over the backing fabric as binding and finished it by hand. it's time consuming, but i like the hand stitched touch.





Finally, we made a little dedication on the back for celia, and aryn wrapped it up and hopped over to the baby shower. done and done.


if you like piecing quilt tops but hate the assembly and quilting parts, give me a shout - quilter for hire. cultivatingdomesticity(at)gmail(dot)com



also have to give a shout out to my mom for making this awesome thread-catching pouch that hangs off the side of the sewing table - by the grace of gravity and a sand bag - and handles all those pesky little threads you snip off during the course of quilting that always end up all over the carpet and jamming up your vacuum cleaner. and it's so pretty on the outside and soft and furry on the inside, thanks mom!

5 comments:

Jennifer Walters said...

Lovely quilt! My mom made me a thread-catching pouch, too! I never knew such things existed. I'm a novice quilter and love it. I'm glad you're doing well, Kasha.

kasha said...

Thanks Jennifer! It's so good to hear from you; how's Smith? Isn't the thread-catcher pouch brilliant? I love that you're quilting. Hope you're well.

la_sale_bete said...

I love the quilting details! Also, how does the thread-catching pouch work? Do you just sweep the threads in as you go? It seems miraculous.

kasha said...

The thread-catching pouch is basically like a little rubbish bin that hangs off the side of your sewing table. This idea seemed cute but unnecessary to me until I actually started quilting and realized that 85% of the threads I tossed toward the trash can at my feet never made it in and took up my precious time and attention while quilting. You can find them at sewing stores, or I bet my mom could email you the pattern if you're interested.

aryn said...

well done as always, kasha. looking forward to our next joint project.. can i get away with giving you a quilt top for your wedding? and then you can finish it on your own? or is that tacky?

love!