I-Spy a boy quilt from FairyFace Designs

Sarah from FairyFace Designs is always linking up to Fabric Tuesday with such darling little projects!!  I especially love this little cozy...there's just something about tiny piecing that is too cute to deny (and is actually part of her giveaway!!)!  Today she's sharing a variation of an I-Spy quilt, and I love how she's done it.  I have many of the same boy prints she does and I have such a hard time because I don't want to chop them up!  Anyway, she does a great job explaining how she put the whole thing together.  Don't forget to stop by FairyFace Designs and get to know her better :)

The PictureBox quilt is finished! (*Jumps up and down with excitement*)

I'm really so thrilled with how this quilt turned out. The 3 people who've seen it in "real life" thought it was lovely too so that eased the nerves a little about it!

This quilt is all out of my own head. Its inspiration came from the idea of an I Spy quilt but I had some fabrics with large prints which I wanted to use for it and I jumped from there to the idea of framed pictures - my son has some jungle prints framed on his wall which were part of the inspiration.



As I've said in a previous post, the panels on either side of the centre were inspired by those long photo frames holding 3-4 pictures vertically.

This quilt is made for a baby boy and is part of a two quilt set - the other being for his sister. I quilted the Sophie's Dreams quilt with wonky straight lines and after a LOT of thought I decided to stick with that approach for this one too. I threw around a number of other quilting techniques in my head - it wasn't an easy decision - but I wanted to keep some consistency between the quilts as they're quite different design wise. Plus, I do love the effect of the wonky straight lines, they give a lovely texture to the quilt.

The foundation of the design is 3 large fabric panels. Each one measures approx 10" x 15" and is framed with a 1 inch strip of a calm blue/green print, and then 3" wide strips of fabric in varying prints and colours. I tried to keep the scrappy border prints to geometrical type designs, rather than featuring more animals although I made a couple of exceptions to bring in some prints from the sister quilt.

The 3 main panels are (from top to bottom) Lesley Grainger's Wild Friends - Jungle Animals, Riley Blake's Hooty Hoot - Kangaroo and Ann Kelle's Urban Zoologie Owls. Like the Sophie's Dreams quilt, this quilt is made to be midway between cot bed and twin bed size so that it can be used straight away on baby's cot, and then layered up over other covers on his bed when he gets older, or used as a throw. The quilt sits nicely on a twin bed:

I decided that a solid colour binding would work best on this quilt as there's so much going on in the quilt. I went for a lovely soft blue cotton and it frames the quilt really nicely.

The backing is a white with a blue polka dot and is a single piece of fabric. The little boy's full name is appliqued in the centre of the quilt using some of the navy fabric used in the quilt and raw edge applique.

All in all, I'm really happy with it. The white space created by the sashing makes the design pattern stand out and there's lots of interest there for any little boy - jungle animals, elephants, owls, whales, kangaroos, koalas and more, along with some cars and lots of colour and texture too! 

I was pretty pleased when I put the two quilts together this morning, side by side. I made a conscious effort to try and use some of the same fabrics in the quilts in order to link them, as well as making them the same size and using the same straight line quilting. This is the Sophie's Dreams quilt - you can see the continuity of fabrics and quilting:





Here they are, jumbled together and you can see they work well together:



I brought them outside and draped them across a couple of chairs in the garden, I really like the effect:

Now all I need to do is wash and dry the PictureBox one to give it the same lovely crinkly effect as Sophie's Dreams one has, and meet Anna to hand them over!



Sarah also has a great linky going on right now...you can link-up your summer sewing plans!  A fun way to see what everyone else is up to and maybe set some goals for yourself!!

I'm a Ginger Monkey's fabulous quilt...

Before our gorgeous feature, let me just ask if you've signed up for our Denyse Schmidt fabric giveaway?  Make sure to do so!!  And also, we've got a new advertiser, Ole Frog Eyes, we'd love for you to stop by and see what she's all about.  

Okay on to the great feature!!

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Katy from I'm a Ginger Monkey and the fabulous "technicolour yawn quilt!" How great and colorful is this? She made this quilt from all her scraps, ones she hated and loved! For some serious inspiration, you  must go visit her blog...

It all started with this quilt. Fair to say Melanie's quilt haunted my dreams. Still does. In my humble opinion it is the perfect quilt. It ticks every box on the perfect quilt check list.

And, after a while of it haunting me I figured I'd make my own version - not a complete copy, a little different but the same basic blocks.

So I had a practise (and a couple of fails) and came up with this mock up;

I cut a whole heap of 2 1/2 inch squares and kept them in a little box my friend Nicole sent me long ago in a swap. My plan was simple - I was to use even the ugliest of fabrics, along with some of my most favourite scraps and I wouldn't buy any fabric. (Actually, I had to buy some more of the turquoise blue solid because I used some in something else and then didn't have quite enough...but that was it). The black was from a bed sheet I'd bought from ikea to use as a quilt backing, and the little squares were all from my scrapbox (and from the kind donations of others). Some of you even quilted along with me (although I have to say I wasn't the best leader of a quilt along and fell behind pretty early on).

My friend and neighbour saw the blocks when I was making the quilt and fell in love with them. So I decided when it was finished it would be her quilt, as a thank you for being such a great friend and neighbour for the past 11 years.

I had it long armed quilted by the wonderful Chris (who chose this art nouveau style fan pattern) and it was bound in more of the same black bed sheet.

Now it's all finished. My friend is away on holiday, but as soon as she's home it'll be handed over and begin it's life with it's new family. I expect it'll get used to death. I'm actually hoping in years down the line she asks me to patch up little worn areas or fix tiny holes from it being dragged about the house and garden.

The next time it's my turn in a quilting bee - this is what I'll be asking for. I still have half the bed sheet left and since I started this quilt my scraps have bred and gotten really quite out of control. I think I need a big one, just for me.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who quilted along with me and made their own scrap vomit/technicolour yawn quilt. Even though this one isn't mine I think it's one of my all time favourites. There's nothing quite as satisfying as a scrap quilt, is there?