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