An Apollo 11, Skylab, Saturn V Rocket Quilt

 As each kid in the family has come up to the age of 10, they've gotten their Big Kid Quilt.  Wes chose a long time ago to have a Saturn V Rocket with the Skylab Shroud on his quilt.

Little did I realize that his 11th birthday would be right before the 50th celebration of the landing of the Apollo 11 mission on the moon.  The size of this quilt was determined by the size of his bed and also the backing, which I made first.

Panels of the planets (yay! Pluto!)

 So when I originally stared designing the rocket, I realized that it would be very lonely given the scale of the front of the quilt.  So I consulted with Wes and we decided to add Apollo 11, and words to fill in the front.

 I also ordered and sewed on mission patches from Apollo 11 and Skylab, including a special commemorative Apollo 11 patch with the years and astronauts names.

 As I was finishing it up, I told my husband that I could pretty well guarantee that no one in the world has a quilt like Wes!

 
I will try to put together a post on how I created the two rockets and the lettering.

Four-in-Art Quarter 1: Light, Shimmer, Lips!

It's reveal day! Quarter one for Four-in-Art.  This year's theme is Light and our first quarter is Shimmer.

There isn't too much to say about this quilt.

I was rather stumped as to what I should do this time around, so I went to the web and searched on Shimmer.  Most things referred to how a shimmer is perceived - brighter and darker - but one image really stood out to me.

Lips! With Glitter!  So I went with something fun.

(as far as I could find, this was an open source picture.  If I find out otherwise, I'll be happy to acknowledge the source)


I do usually try to do something in each art quilt that I've not tried before.  So this one has printing directly onto fabric - I used my color printer and Kona White fabric.

The threads for quilting were primarily Invisifil because they have a nice shine to them.  The lips were outline quilted with a gold metallic - but its rather lost in the glitter.

I also experimented a bit with some trapunto.

The lips were at first somewhat shriveled

So I pumped them up.  Too much!  The whole quilt was distorted.

A little goes a long way with trapunto.

The shimmer did print fairly well - but I thought I'd go all out for the shine - so glitter it was! A golden tone on the lips and a white "diamond" on the borders.

I took this shot in direct sunlight - trying to catch some of the shimmer from the glitter.  You'll have to take my word for it that this quilt really shines.

I'm not terribly thrilled with my attempts at a facing - the corners need some work.

The fairly boring back.  At least I matched my facing to the backing.  I plan on stitching on my label to hide the trapunto openings.  I barely got this quilt finished in time - so no label yet!

This little quilt finished up at 12" x 12".  I think I'm back to the smaller shape this year - after trying bigger last year.

Please check out all my mates playing along.

Bette Ayers	https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2
Camilla Cathro	https://faffling.blogspot.com
Elizabeth Eastmond	http://www.opquilt.com
Janine Green	http://www.rainbowhare.com
Nancy Myers	http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com
Rachel Riley	http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com
Simone Bradford	http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Catherine                                        knottedcotton

Jelly Roll Race Emergency Gift

 On the last day of school, we found out that WD's teacher would not be returning the next year to teach because she was headed to Poland to teach English. 

 WD was sad, and I said if I had known I would have made her a quilt.

Enter a top that has sat in a box for a while, that I was never 100% in love with.  The purple border really helps!

I had a good back ground fabric in the stash.  You can barely see my seams!

Super fast stipple/meander quilting, and machine bound.  But finished before she left the States!

Loki photo bombing.

The Girl Sews Again

 On Saturday she declared that she wanted to do more sewing.  I pulled out some old blocks from a project I did with my niece many years ago.  E pieced the butterfly blocks together.  She chose a backing.  I did the pinning, and she started going to town with the decorative embroidery stitches on my sewing machine.  After changing thread colors 5 times, she was even figuring out how to thread the machine.

 The back.  We machined sewed the binding.  I think next time I'll cut a wider binding, so it will be easier to turn.   She's pretty happy with it.  I am even learning to not stress over the mistakes.  She's happy and I don't want to scare her away from sewing.  She even told me she wants to grow up and be an 'expert sew-er' just like me :). I also have to say that at age 9, she has much better control over the fabric and how to do things.  We may have to consider her own machine for Christmas...

She also whipped out this pillow earlier in the week.  One more kitty fabric used.  Merkitties.  How funny.