Some of my friends here (girls I have known for a while and those from our bunco group) are attempting a friendship/memory quilt this winter. The idea is that each person picks an idea for a square and then makes a bunch of that same square and then we get to get together and give each other person one of our squares, so you end up with however many different squares to make a quilt from. Unlike the one pictured here, ours will be Japanese themed. We are also making one for auctioning to charity.The process of making the square is relatively easy (no stitching required). You find a pattern you like and then hunt down fabric that will work with your pattern. Then you traces a pattern transfer the pattern onto the fabric and apply wonderunder to make it stick to the background, so all you are doing is cutting and ironing to make the square. Once you have all your new squares from your friends, it is on you to do the stitching around all pieces of fabric to secure them down in a fashion that will be uniform throughout the squares you now have. So to make the squares for everyone is really not that hard. I am signed up for three pretty simple squares (fans, taiko drum, and koi fish). I think it will be pretty fun and I have always wanted to see the process of making a quilt, in case I ever wanted to make one on my own in the future.
Oh, and to get the finished product, you need to actually do quilting or pay someone to finish the quilting part of it. I am hoping to get someone to show me how to do it so I can do it on my own when I am ready....but we will see.
I know I really don't need another project on my head but this is pretty simple and I only have to do the cut out and ironing part to meet everyone else's deadline. The finished project is then on me to do. So I can take my time on that if I want. We are planning to exchange squares near the end of February....
9 comments:
That sounds like a cool project to be involved with.
I've always though I'd like to do a quilt but as I can barely sew a button on I've never taken a look at it. Maybe in a few years.
That sounds like fun. You must post pics when you are done with your squares.
That sounds pretty cool. Keep us updated on your progress. I can't wait to see how it turns out!
I will definitely post pics when I get the squares done. I hopefully will end up doing the quilting myself but if I don't, I'll still post a picture of the finished product as well. Hopefully it won't take me as long as the baby blanket did....
I can guide you through the quilting process if you decide to do it yourself. I made quilts when we were in Texas and you can do it by hand, but if you have a sewing machine or access to one it would be much easier. Let me know if you need help. I have to confess that I have all the squares cut for a fishing quilt in storage. Maybe I will try to get to that as a winter project for next year. Your quilt is going to be quite beautiful!
Thanks Mom...that would be awesome. The quilts here look more like Grandma's quilts you have given me than like the puffy ones you see at craft shows...I always thought Grandma's started out puffy and then just got flatter but perhaps I was wrong and it is more of a technique thing....I still have my singer and I will be trying it out tomorrow on some pillows I am making for K. I haven't used it since we got here.
Your Grammies quilts did not have the amount of batting in them that most quilters use today. If you want them puffy, you can use the thicker batting. We used very thick batting or double-layered it because we did "Theme" quilts and we freehanded around the applique which were fabric cut outs of as an example a palm tree for our island quilt. So the bark was one element and the palm leaves each leaf a separate element and of course coconuts. Each element was quilted with monofilament line - like fishing line. It really disapeared in the puffiness. It was so much fun to make these quilts. I would love to make one with you sometime.
I remember those quilts from Texas...wow, I had forgotten about you guys doing that. These ones we are doing have no batting underneath that applique but I am doing some detail stitching on mine with my renewed embroidery skills from Grandma.... I will definitely be asking for help for the quilting part....getting the frames lined up seems to be hard but who knows...
That's very very cool. I want to make a t-shirt quilt and I looked up how to do it and I bought the fusable webbing to make the t-shirts more sturdy and then stopped. I'm paralyzed with fear about making the first cut. :)
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