Slowly coming together

Isn't this a gorgeous font for Amelia's name? I thought so too and then found out that it's actually Liz's, Amelia's mum, normal handwriting. I scaled it up from the quilt draft that Liz and I put together and transfered it to the paper side of fusible webbing (in reverse) before ironing it to the chosen fabric, a hot pink squiggle from Spotlight. Here it is laid out to check placement before finally ironing it onto the quilt front.

Whenever I wasn't able to spread out and take over my dinner table or living room floor, I worked on the caterpillar pieces that needed hand sewing.

I drew on the caterpillars legs with my water erasable Clover pen

and then fused on little ovals of black velvet for the feet. Later I will free motion stitch the leg line and around the raw edges of the foot with matching black thread.

Next onto the flower vine. I drew in the vinework and pinned in templates of all the leaves.

Then I fussy cut all the leaves from 3 different fabrics and roughly cut them out before pinning them in place. Again I wanted to see them all in place before committing to ironing everything permanently.

Once all the leaves were ironed on I stitched in the vine lines and secured all the leaves by sewing around all the edges.

Construction begins

It begins with templates - a LOT of templates. I drafted lots of flowers, butterflies and hearts in varying sizes on paper and then made cardboard templates of each one.

I also made a number of photocopies of the shapes which I roughly cut out and used to help with placement of them on the quilt.

While I could have simply ironed the fabric to the fusible webbing for most of the shapes without first having an idea where they'd wind up in the quilt, I found it was really important to plan carefully with the caterpillar and surrounding flowers, particularly since they had to fit in a tighter formation and because I would have stitching connecting all the flowers and leaves.

I pinned all my paper shapes in place and then hung the quilt front from my curtain tracks to create an oversized design board.

I traced all the shapes in reverse onto the paper side of fusible webbing and roughly cut them out outside the lines. Next I used my cardboard templates so that I could visualise how the final shape would look, in particular the butterflies and flowers, before ironing the fusible webbing in place.

As I each fabric was selected, fused and fussy cut, it was pinned in place on the quilt front so that I could step back and look at the quilt from a distance to check that the colours weren't bunched or if this area needed more pink or purple to balance things. It was only after all the pieces were in place that they were ironed on.

Pink and purple explosion

It's been pedal to the metal here for the last month constructing Amelia's King Single bed quilt so to catch up...

...the custom made apron was a big hit with little Amelia

and then there was an explosion of pink and purple as well as some textured coloured fabrics for the caterpillar, as I collected fabrics for her King Single quilt.

The main fabric for the front and back was a pale pink homespun from Lincraft (bottom of the left pile). The right pile of various quilting weight cotton fabrics made up the hearts, butterflies, flowers and vine leaves that were appliqued on (sourced from Fabric Shack, eQuilter and my own stash). The textured caterpillar was made of (left pile, from top to bottom) gold metal trim on a yellow marble cotton print, orange gathered organza trim on orange homespun, lilac crystal organza with a pink poplin base, royal purple long-haired chiffon with a purple homespun base (not shown), spotted emerald green tulle with a green homespun base, pink soft tulle with hot pink sequins on a hot pink homespun base, and blue crushed velvet (all from Spotlight or Lincraft).