New Dresses and a New Design

Healing Frog, Piglet, Lumpy, and Tigger Modeling the
Latest in Dog Fashions

I have been keeping busy this week making doggie dresses.  I am very happy with all of them, and unless you click the image bigger you will never know just how dog gone cute that brown dress which Piglet is modeling actually is. Hey I couldn't help the pun.  My personal favorite this week is the mermaid costume which Tigger is sporting below.  This is my own design and I drew the curves free form after looking at different fin types.  DD loved it so much she wanted me to keep it until the next time we go to our friend's photography studio so she would know for sure that she could see Mocha wearing it.

Tigger, M.R. Monkey, and Pooh showcase their darling dresses
 upon my Spirograph Fabric 

This brings my dress count this month up to 13 how about that?

Baby Butterfly Quilt Finished

Girl's Safari Quilt Side

My little girly safari quilt is all finished.  I washed it before photographing it for you so it has that ultra cuddly look from not preshrinking the batting.  Where the yard was short the tops of the heads on the baby animals is cut off, but I find the effect charming.  Like a Built in Peak-a-boo.

While I did marry into being an aunt, and all of my siblings have experienced the first "niece" in DD, this quilt is for my first niece.  The quilting is loops with extra quilting on the WonderUnder + raw edge butterflies.    Randomly I threw in a couple of stars and whenever it seemed right I added a heart so those are at least every foot or so.  The top and bottom borders of pink are quilted loops of hearts.  I wasn't sure which thread to use, so I laid out all of my pink threads, and the winner was a nice muted mauve surprisingly enough, but it looks nice on both the front and back, with just the right amount of blending.  So the baby's name would stand out I quilted that in florescent bright hot pink and then loops of hearts in the mauve underneath.

Quilted Baby's Name

Clearly this is one of my reversible quilts.  The butterflies are the same batik as the binding and front bordering strips.  For an extra bit of detail I hand embroidered antennas on the butterflies with lilac embroidery floss which if you click the image below to see it in a larger size you might even be able to see the antennas on the bigger butterflies.  

Baby's Butterfly Quilt 2nd Side

The best fairy tales say  you can give the baby a blessing for the future:

Dear Sweet Grace, I wish you to be able to forgive easily and 

love deeply. 

My River Art Quilt is Finished

Wall hanging River Art Quilt Finished

My River Art Quilt is finished!  Thank goodness.  I was really not liking this quilt while quilting it.  So many thread color changes, so many different textures.  It felt like it really drug on.  But now that it is all bound and ready for a hanging sleeve I am feeling much better about it.

Now to get to the Butterfly Baby Quilt that I have loaded on the quilt frame!

Baby Butterfly Quilt

Pink Safari Quilt Flimsy

This is a little quickie quilt.  A love it up and wear it out sort of blankie.  It is reversible with this wonderful baby animal print.  Nearly all blocks have a detail in pink that matches the broad strip that I added.  The more I stitched on the pink the more I loved it for this quilt.  It is a batik with flowers but it has a certain tribal look which goes great with the baby African Animals.  I found this print as a 35" inch remnant and the friend I was with said "well no one else will have anything like it".  That is for sure.  The piece wasn't quite the right shape so the pink was added to square it out a bit.

Butterfly Quilt Back

The back is a grey blender with raw edged applique butterflies on it.  I was planning to quilt the antenna onto it using a buildup of thread, but instead I think I will use a bit of lilac embroidery floss instead.  The pink butterflies are made from the same batik as the pink strip on the front and I have already made the matching pink binding.  I will be quilting this one with simple swirls all over it.  As though the butterflies are fluttering around.  In a big open area I will be quilting the baby's name "Grace" and likely run over that a time or three so that the thread builds up well.  I would love to see this quilt on the frame by the first of next week.

Layouts and Fabric Issues

Lilly's Quilt Front

The other day when looking at the charms I would be using in Lilly's Garden Quilt, I discovered many of the fabrics I'd selected were listed on back order.  No time like now to be proactive right?  So I popped them a note asking when everything would be avail again.  The response was swift but the answer was not a pleasing on.  They are not expected in until Jan./Feb. of next year, and the recommend I select something else.  Well I'd tried that and wasn't having much luck so selected a different online fabric store and revised the layout of the front to suit.  The colors for the applique are divine!  Not that you can really tell that with the bit of line drawing I've thrown there to show what it will look like.

Below you will find the back that so far I like best.  EQ tells me I have made something like 35 revisions, but I think it's more like 10 okay maybe 15 different layouts.  The blue is picked up from the borders, the light of the stars is the same fabric that the fairies are embroidered on to.  As for that purple and the green those are from the fabrics I have selected for the Wisteria applique.  Oh and lastly the deep green squares are the applique fabric for the calla lily leaves.  

Lilly's Garden Quilt Back Star Option

There is just one problem and that is were all of you come in.  What can I do about the way the purple vertical border dumps into the black?  I thought a HST would work, but it doesn't.  I tried splitting it half black and half purple and that made the black border look odd and then I tried  splitting it half purple and half blue and that provided an off balanced look.  Suggestions Please!

I have also been working on something else.  This time it's something for me.  Just for me, okay and by default my DH; for all those times when I have to put a comforter on my own bed and wonder why I don't have one of my own handmade beauties for my bed.  Do you recall this fabric?  Oh yes I thought you might.  When I was digging for the perfect something or other quilty answer for another quilt I found a pattern in an old McCall's quilting magazine called Mandala you can see the original quilt here.   

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Mandala Spirograph Quilt

Well I just knew it was the perfect answer to my spirograph fabric shown above and I have not only been hard at work trying to make all the colors and tones work together, I've had the help of my friend Vicki (thankfully).  The fabrics aren't set in stone yet, but isn't coming together nicely?

Because I'm a nut, each circle will be turned edge hand appliqued. With both the smallest and medium sizes of circles coming from the panel as shown above. The background fabric is a circling swirl.  Though I do plan to use true black for my HST's. 

Talk about having my burners full.  Not to mention the top and backing of a quick baby quilt that I finished up today, but that is a story for tomorrow when the camera battery is all charged back up!