GiGi's quilt

I have previously mentioned that I have some very cute little neighbours. I made Miss Mia a nice bright pick and patchworky quilt and gifted it to her in 2015. But there is another little neighbour, about the same size, who was on the look out for a little something something.

Miss GiGi is a cute little poppet, and when she and her mum were in the local Spotlight, they came across a panel which she fell in love with.  Mum being the obliging, and adventurous sort, bought a couple of panels and some coordinating solids and arrived on my doorstep wanting to learn to sew.

Rather than going all in, mum made some cute pillows, to learn how to do straight seams and just get a little practice in. Meanwhile I started cutting into the solids.  Before we knew what happened we had half a quilt top. I say half, because we thought we were done, but in taking it home, decided it needed more length.

With some thought (I didn't want to throw off the very symmetrical feel we had going), I added extra to the top and bottom, and I think those little birds are just the ticket. I almost can't picture it without it now.

I pieced together a back using the leftover big chunks of the solids, got it basted and then decided that I really wanted to FMQ over and around the detailed designs on the panels... Cue my nightmare.

I've never really done any proper FMQ before. And what I have done has been terrible, so I'm not sure what made me think I could do this.

But do it, I did!!  And I think it looks pretty cute (at least from the front).  There are 5 or 6 different thread colours going on, as each solid is quilted in it's corresponding thread, as is the detail section.  The back looks hilarious because I did a super cute pieced back, but then quilted it with matching bobbins, so it's like crayon drawings everywhere that doesn't reflect the piecing at all. Frankly, the back looks like I quilted it with my feet, so this is definitely a "this side is the top" rather than any double sided goodness.

For binding, I gathered some of the leftovers from piecing and chopped it up into 2.5" strips and so there is a nice scrappy thing going on there. It's just straight grain because I ain't got time for no bias.

I also totally cheated when I attached it, and went with a machine binding. I attached as normal to the front, with a 1/4" seam, and then folded over and, using a fabulous bright pink thread, chose one of the decorative stitches on my machine and whipped around.  While I don't know if this would work for most quilts, this one, with it's fluro colours and messy FMQ , it was the right fit.

I've washed and tumble dried it (because it was covered in random threads, and I was really worried about how some of that FMQ would hold up). But it held up through the wash and has now been happily given back to little GiGi.  Hopefully she loves it and doesn't grow sick of all that colour too quickly.

So a bit of fun piecing, and some quality learning for me with the FMQ. I might be slightly more ready to think about tackling some of those other "quilting" level projects that have been scaring me off.

E xx