October has flown by but I managed to complete two quilts for my grandsons this month. The month started out with a trip to the American Quilt Society show in Des Moines Iowa. While there I took a class on machine quilting with Sharon Shambler where we focused on background filling, especially circles. Little did I know this new machine quilting skill would come in very handy later in the month.
A couple weeks later I went to my local guild's annual fall quilt retreat, Camp Wannamakeablankie. Our first order of business was to make the schlep bags hanging on the wall for a charity project.
These bags are made for foster kids who suddenly get moved and their possessions are just thrown in plastic garbage bags. One of our group members is a school nurse in the local public schools who knew a young girl about to age out of foster care. This young girl was collecting used backpacks and small suitcases for these foster children sometimes known as garbage bag kids. It is always nice to be able to put our fabric stashes to a good project.
After the schlep bags were done I started working on a quilt for my two year old grandson for Christmas. This pattern is called Fancy Foxes by Elizabeth Hartmen.
The glasses on the fox were what caught my attention, I frequently (always) wear reading glasses while I stitch and park them on top of my head like a headband when I don't need them. My grandson loves to reach those glasses out of my hair and have me put them on. He conversely likes to take his Grandpa's glasses who wears his all the time and move them to the top of his head. So this quilt has a grandpa and grandma fox complete with glasses.
I found this cute fox fabric for the back of the quilt and had enough left over to make a pillowcase.
My seven year old grandson has always loved dinosaurs and this past summer his parents decided he was old enough to see the Jurassic Park movie. A couple weeks ago he told me he wanted a dinosaur quilt for Christmas, a Jurassic Park dinosaur quilt, which meant scary dinosaurs. What is a Grandma to do? There are no patterns for this. I ended up buying a Jurrassic park comforter at Walmart. I completely took it apart (which not surprisingly took less than an hour) and layered the top with a good cotton batting and cotton backing fabric and requilted the whole thing. Now those circles from the Sharon Shambler class come into play, they make great dinosaur skin.
The rest of the quilt was just outlining the pictures on the top
then I filled everything else with clouds or long blades of grass to give it a jungle feel.
Whew! October done and two Christmas presents done :)
Happy Stitching,
Cheri
Posted with Blogsy
I'm working my tail off lately trying to get Christmas gifts completed. so many UFO's. Love your fox quilt.
ReplyDeleteThe fox print is an interesting one. I like how you used it in a pillow case. And it will go well with the quilt.
ReplyDeleteYou finished October with a bang! That fox pattern is so popular and you made yours super cute. You were very creative to come up with a Dino solution and all your new learned skills were practiced. At least the comforter was easy to take apart, which like you said, was no surprise.
ReplyDeleteLove your retreat name, gave me a giggle. Your foxes are so cute, it's a great design. Very clever idea with the dinosaur quilt too. It's really awful what some kids have to go through, so any little bit of help we can give is great.
ReplyDeleteyour foxes look fantastic!! Cute fox fabric for the pillowcase too :0) That's one scary dinosaur - your quilting looks great!
ReplyDeleteLove the idea of the bags! The term garbage bag kids is so sad!
ReplyDeleteGreat quilts!!
Very productive October, Cheri. Yes, the dinosaurs are scary enough. It will be well loved.
ReplyDeleteGreat pic of friend Julie!!
Hi, love the way the dinosaurs turned out. The boys are going to be so happy.
ReplyDeleteWhat a clever idea to use that top from Walmart. I like the way you quilted it.
ReplyDelete