And I didn’t even make a ‘proper’ quilt! But I tell you what, I tells ya Mabel, quilts are deceptively simple when all you have at your disposal is scrap fabric (more on that later), a small table space and a smaller domestic sewing machine. But I fought on and persevered, my fine friends. I did it. And I will probably never do it again. BEHOLD, THE QUILT.
I’m preeeeetty proud of it, considering. It is wonky on all counts. But it’s for a child so hey, he won’t judge. OR WILL HE. (He won’t) HE MIGHT (stop it).
So, let’s break it down.
I cut out little animal and fruit shapes. This alone too me about 7 goes, because I am a) rubbish at shapes b) impatient c) distracted easily or d) all of the above.
So we’ve got bunnies, apples and fish. The fish I sewed together verrry simply, as they were going under a layer of crystal chiffon so didn’t need to be neat. Like this!
MAGIC! So the pond? It’s a piece of chiffon sewn over a piece of the stretch ribbed stuff you put on the sleeve ends of hoodies. I inserted the fish in between the layers so they kind of move about with a bit of a shake of the blanket. But they LOOK like they’re under water. Sort of. I thought I was being pretty clever at the time.
The apples, I went with a rustic kind of look. Wait, did I say rustic? I MEANT SHITTY AND HASTY. They’re made from soft felt and well, they will survive the rough and tumble world of toddlers better this way. Trust me, I tested it by trying to destroy one.
That white dot isn’t some kind of felt syphalis, it’s a velcro dot. Shit is mad awesome, yo. They’re stick-on, but not stick-on enough so you need to stitch them on. But still, the magic of velcro! I sewed the other side of the dots to the tree shape I’d cut out. I then edged the tree, which I couldn’t be bothered hemming in any way, with rikrak wavy stuff. I had bought a faffillion different colours of it in the Great RikRak Famine of 2012 and hadn’t used it yet.
With the bunnies, I sewed them properly, like a grown up. But first, I had to do some of the worst had embroidery seen since Grade 4. But they still look cute.
UNLESS YOU TURN THEM OVER AHAHAHA OH GODS.
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘You can tell a good tailor because his inside stitches are as good as his outside stitches’. This is something I aspire to, sure, but it’s not going to happen when I have maybe 5 hours of not sleeping a week to make things (and blog and dye my hair, two things I haven’t done in maybe 6 weeks +).
So I stitched the bunnikins together, stuffed them full of some wadding I keep handy for stuffing things with a fury. I then inserted a ribbon up each of their adorable little clackers and sewed them shut.
I also made them a little bunny burrow. It’s a circle with a half circle pouch. You sew the free end of the ribbon into the bottom of the pouch, so that your little bunnies don’t escape. Then I cut out a green fabric ‘hill’. I got to about hour two of ‘Armageddon‘ and I thought ‘Hey! Why not try some freestyle embroidery stitching on my sewing machine that DOESN’T ALLOW THAT AT ALL!’ I blame an overdose of Aerosmith, but it turned out pretty good.
Cool looking grass or perhaps the flames of Hell? We’ll never know.
So! That was all actually the easy part. The really fucking difficult part was sewing the three pieces onto the star filled background piece. Small sewing machines are NOT meant for that kind of large scale thing, but I managed. Then I had to put the top sheet, the wadding I’d bought on sale, and then the bottom sheet. Kind of easy, except for the constant slipping of the three layers and the fact that fat wads of fabric don’t always stay straight. It was a more labourious than you’d reckon.
But finally. FINALLY. I could attached the edging. This I had from a failed bag making attempt and it was over four metres. I won’t show you a close up of that, because I really ballsed it up, but after repeated attempts it stayed on and straight and I stopped having to unpick it. And that first picture is the finished product. Aww yiss.
All of the fabric I used was from scraps or fabric I’ve bought and not used. It was pretty cathartic to do! I have a shitload of scraps and yards of fabric that I won’t use for anything realistic and to be able to re-porpoise them into something for someone else was great.
If I had to rate this project, I would give it 7.5 out of 10. It was very, very different to what I normally make and had a lot of new skills to throw me off. But I like the finished product, for all my bitching.
Late Night Stitch Club 
