Pets on Quilts

Lilypad Quilting is hosting this year's Pets on Quilts show. I wasn't around for last years, but when I heard about this I knew I had to get in on the action. I was actually saying to another quilter about 2 weeks ago it seems a lot of quilters are cat people.  I know many are dog people too, but I see more bloggy quilters who have help from their feline friends.

I am posting this a few days early to link up on the day of because I am so busy with my kids right now (not a bad thing!) that I wanted to make sure I got this done on time.

I have two things I am showing you here. One is of a cat on a quilt, but of note, the quilt is a cat themed quilt.

The cat, his name is Strider. He is an orange tabby and friendliest cat ever. He has been an awesome "introductory" pet for my two children as he is so accommodating with being patted, petted, snuggled, and backward pet (you know, when you start from the tail and pet up to the head). He's a funny animal and we love him dearly. We have another cat, Willow. She is very, very shy - she was a rescue. I like to think we're giving her a good comfortable home, but for all I know she hates it here. LOL!!

The quilt is one I made for my youngest brother (I have 3 older brothers). He's a single fellow, perpetually I fear, but hey, if he's happy, it's all good. But at the same time I felt he needed a quilt. Sean and I haven't always gotten along, (getting sappy here) but I love him, so this was my version of a peace offering. Hey, none of my other brothers have a quilt yet. I hope he likes it.

So just in case you can't really see, the gray, black and orange pattern are all small cats. I went with the  colour scheme to go with normal "cat colours". Also the beige coloured fabric says "meow" all over it.  It is the biggest quilt I have ever machine quilted.

July FMQ challenge

And right on the heels of our June challenge, I can safely say I got July's FMQ done too. I just made the "mistake" of looking on the page on facebook and I know it's not a competition, but the gorgeous work these people (I'd say ladies, but don't want to assume here) are completing is amazing.

Mine is not, but hey, I'm learning, so it's all good. However, I don't think I'll be linking up on facebook :)

I thought July's challenge was a really neat filler. I like this idea of making smaller boxes and filling it. I think I'd need to map it out more carefully on an actual quilt instead of winging it like I did on my practice piece here. I did sketch it, but still not the same. As I mentioned on my June post, my fabric marker wasn't working too well, something I think might help with this style.

So here we go. I am adding pictures of my finished piece, and with my sketch beside, just so show how it translated. I still kind stippling more instinctive than other designs, but, hey, I did try others! Never know unless I try!

June FMQ challenge

Yep, we're at the end of July and I am just getting June's challenge up, but at least I got it done! Hey, maybe didn't qualify for prizes last month, but that's okay. I simply didn't have time in June, and wanted to give it a chance.

So here we go. Here are pictures of the front and back of my June piece. Further down there is a picture of my sketch vs end piece. One way I went sideways on this was that my fabric marker just wasn't marking that well and so it didn't translate well to my piece. I attempted a little dragonfly there... did not work out as well as I hoped but still a cute idea.  I really like good filler ideas, but I think for a full quilt this method would take a lot of pre-planning.

Front of challenge piece

 I added the back because I think when the back looks almost as good as the front you're doing pretty well in the FMQ world.

Back of challenge piece

 Pebbles - I love the look of pebbles, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not get the swing of doing them. These were bigger ones, but I found I had problems skipping from one pebble to the next, although the end result is neat.

 And here is the sketch vs. stitch. I made a mistake adding the feathered part in. Not my thing, oh well!!

Sock Monkey

I've been meaning to post on this for some time now.

A while back my god daughter asked me if I could make her a sock monkey. I had never made a sock monkey before, but could resist when she threw down the "craft smack down".

I found the biggest challenge was actually getting my hands on the proper sock monkey socks. You know, that ones with the red heels. I ended up ordering them online as I could not find them at all locally.

I also scoured the web for a really good sock monkey tutorial. Tutorials that kind of phrase things like "oh you just do this and this and this and you're done" don't work. I need step by step. I found this wonderful one which did the trick.

And so end result? Wonderful! My coworkers think I could sell them. I'll see. I need more socks. I also did this little tutu, because I figured monkey needed clothes.

Pictures!

May FMQ challenge

Hello fellow FMQ challengers! 

I'm adding a quick post about my May FMQ challenge by the lovely Leah Day. I love Leah! I follow her blog anyhow, and she has such a normal approach to quilting to make it so doable for people. And she just seems so sweet. Don't you think? 

Anyhow, I foundation quilting! It's a good filler! What I liked is that giving yourself a line that starts and stops gives you a guide to follow instead of kind of having a meandering design run off on you. It actually makes me think about re-quilting my son's Thomas quilt, as I did stitch in the ditch for that, and this railway design might work great for that.

I realize as I take these pictures that for the purpose of this blog, I should really be using better contrasting threads.  So I hope it shows up reasonably well. 

Oh, and I need to find some of those bobbin sliders things. Perhaps in June while I am popping down for the Washington Quilt Shop Hop. One month until that! Love the shop hop! 

Until next month!

April FMQ Challenge

Hello my quilty friends!! Time for the April update on the Free Motion Quilting Challenge. I've actually been meaning to use this blog for all my crafty stuff, but I'm so bad for taking pictures of stuff. I guess it's a good thing I never wanted to become a professional blogger.

Anyhow, April's challenge - I loved this one! I love this method of transferring over a pattern for quilting purposes, and am so certain I will use it again. I've actually found myself seeing other patterns and thinking "I could transfer that over and quilt it on...".

So, I've attached pictures of the original pattern, courtesy Don Linn, my transfer through tulle (which was hard for me to find oddly enough... finally found it in the wedding section of Michael's. Living in Canada sometimes poses some challenges with finding supplies on a short time limit), and my final quilting. I used black thread on off white muslin, so it would stand out more, although I don't think on a normal quilt I would use something so contrasting. Of course I'm not perfect, but I am happy with the overall concept, and outcome.

I almost forgot!

Oh my, it's the 31st, and I almost forgot to get my blog post up for this month's FMQ challenge. Phew! What's really silly is the pictures have been sitting on my computer, I just hadn't gotten around to writing the post!

So... March FMQ challenge! Loved it! loved it loved it. I am on the run, and will keep this short, but a lot of the patterns I tried this month I am certain I will use in future quilting.

A few observations...
Being left handed, I found that going into a pattern - like with the stars - I had to come in from the right side and move left-ward. I think right handed people might do it the other way. I just couldn't wrap my head around doing a star "backwards".

Once again, thread makes all the difference. While getting going I just used the thread in the bobbin that was in there. I just couldn't get the tension right. Switched thread to a better quality - wow, huge difference. No more pulling. Good to know!

So here is what the challenge looked like:

 Here are a few of my sketches:

And here are some results:
Pulling stitches:

 

A picture of my overall efforts:

 

 Swirls

 

Stars