Making Quilts with Kids

I absolutely love to make Art with children.  They are so adventurous and wild in their creativity.  With that in mind, I recently spent some time with two lovely young ladies (Kennedy and Kylie), granddaughters of our friend Alena.  They used fusible fabric to make some very fun faces and then I quilted their designs.  They let me select the border and binding fabrics and I really enjoyed the challenge of finding the perfect fabrics to make their designs sparkle.  These are the finished pieces.    

This gorgeous lady with the parrot was designed by Kylie.  As I made it into a quilt, it offered several challenges.  The first challenge was the combination of colors - I wanted to find a border fabric that would compliment and enhance the colors  and was pleased when I found a fabric with both red and purple!  I think it frames the face nicely.  The next challenge was the tail of the parrot - it was important to Kylie that the tail extend outside the frame into the border.  I like the way it worked out - and learned a few things as well.

This exotic lady was designed by Kennedy.  She offered a few challenges too.  I felt pretty strongly that she needed a very slender purple inner border to bring out the colors.  But I had never added an inner border like that.  So it was a learning experience for me!  I especially like the striped binding that pulls together ALL of the colors.  Kennedy wanted some beads in the final piece - and they really add to the design.

So once again - I had a great time working with the girls and really enjoyed finishing the quilts.  I hope they like them!      barbara

My Next Attempt

Bob and Chloe Fishing     23" x 26"

Since the class sample went so well I decided to try another quilt with the same technique that I used for the flower (in the previous post).  If I had ANY sense at ALL I would have done a second simple design so that I could practice making the pattern myself and learning the whole coding system for matching the pieces on a simple design.
But I just jumped in with abandon and no concept of what I was getting myself into and decided to make a quilt of one of my favorite photos of Bob and our beautiful granddaughter Chloe fishing.
And it was HARD.  Not just challenging, HARD.  It used every one of my brain cells to figure it out and work through the challenges that I had unintentionally set up for myself.  But I am very happy with the end result.
Bob and Chloe are done with a fusible technique because they are so detailed but then they are placed into the rest of the quilt like a puzzle piece.  And there is real fishing line from the pole to the bobber (a red button). 

The fishing line continues to the back of the quilt, and there is a fish on the end of the line.  Not a real fish!  A fabric fish!        It was overall a fun and challenging quilt.      barbara

Great Fun Taking Classes and Trying New Things!

Flower Quilt   18" x 22"

I took an on-line class recently through Craftsy.com  I wasn't at all sure that I would like the format - but it was great.  The teacher was wonderful and the class project taught me a new way to organize my fabric into a quilt.  This is the class project and each piece is overlapped and glued in place before quilting.  The flower is constructed separately and then fit into the design like a final puzzle piece.  VERY different technique than I normally use - but I enjoyed it.  barbara