I made this quilt for my wonderful coworker whose wife had a baby 🙂 It is self drafted out of (primarily) HSTs. I based the pattern off “hugs and kisses XOXO” and used a fat quarter bundle from Joann. It ended up ~60″x60″, which is a bit large for a baby quilt but I don’t care.
Powerpoint design
Finished blocks on my wall
HSTs ready to be laid out
I ended up quilting the whole quilt with “stitch in the ditch”, where you quilt between units along the seam lines. For this to work, you have to iron both seam allowances to one side (instead of open). This makes one side of the seam a bit taller than the other, and the quilting goes on the lower side – the ditch. I used some scraps and the same background for the border, and quilted little heart shapes around the entire thing.
Stitch in the ditch on the left in the main blocks, heart shapes in the border on the right
Let’s start off with an old project – hand embroidery was what started my journey towards quilting, in a roundabout way. 🙂 This is a project I made for my mom for her office. I used Namaste Embroidery’s tutorial for double hoops to make the wreath shape. I had done some simple embroidery before, but this was my first project that I planned out by myself (with PowerPoint!). I wanted to use different kinds of stitches to make petals and create different shapes, and link them with little baby flowers and leaves.
Modified lazy daisy stitch petals with wagon wheel centers and fishbone stitch leaves
I used stitches I had done before but in different ways – a lazy daisy stitch is usually used as a line or small petals with a common center (see off to the right, those light green petals and dark green stem are also lazy daisy stitch). I wanted to make bigger petals that were reminiscent of sunflowers, so I made the lazy daisy into more of a triangle shape. The wagon wheel is always a great flower center, and I stitched it by putting different colored strands together to make a new thread.
Elongated pistil stitch petals with french knot centers and fishbone leaves
I really like the look of pistil stitch, and I varied the number of french knots on the end throughout the petals. French knots have great texture and I liked using them in two different ways on these flowers.
Satin stitch petals with pistil stitch and fishbone leaves
I like these flowers, but it was my first real usage of satin stitch. I think if I did it again, I’d use lazy daisy stitch or even backstitching with a larger thread size to fill in the space. It ended up being tedious, but it turned out nice.
Finch's Creative Endeavors 