Tula Pink for Olivia Violet

This is my Friday Sew & Tell for amylouwho!



When my friend from college, Erin, found out that baby #3 was a girl, I knew I wanted to make her a quilt.

Her shower was last weekend, and though sadly, I didn't get to go, I did get to show her a picture. :)

I promised you all a full process write-up, and here it is (the quilt and the write-up)

Here's how I did it.

I had a Plume FQ bundle... so I pulled out the pinks, and left them folded as they come (I think I had to iron out a couple of them). 

I put it on the 4 1/2" square section of the die that came with the Go! cutter.

After wheeling it through...

...I had a lovely pile of 4 1/2" squares.  

A few of them were a tiny bit off where the fabric folded, but they were close enough, and I didn't have to do any prepping of the fabric (which was nice). :)  Using the pre-folded fat quarters really wasn't technically enough seam allowance, but to save time, I'd probably still do it again, and just adjust my seam allowance if necessary, for the pieces that were folded too small to cover the 4 1/2" die.

While I was making this quilt, I discovered one of my favorite features of the Go!

When cutting, I could fold up one side, and use my cutting mat. (Those are chubby star four-patch strips to the right)

And while I was pressing, I folded up the other side to keep it out of the way.

Very handy.

For my white squares, I had cut 5" x WOF strips, and folded them so they were six layers of fabric deep.  It is a little harder to crank through six strips than four; however not as hard as using the ruler and rotary cutter on the cutting mat.

A couple blog friends had asked me about the accuracy of the squares.  Because I didn't have enough seam allowance for my pinks to give an accurate assessment, I decided to check with the whites, where I did have enough overlap.

I had two of my squares (out of 24) that were 4 3/8" instead of 4 1/2".  All the rest were a perfect 4 1/2" square.  Why those two weren't, I do not know, and should have paid better attention to what position they were in the cutting stack.

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The inspiration:

• This little girl will be named "Olivia Violet Cosette."  So I had to go with Tula Pink... 'cause Pink and purple were always my favorite colors growing up.  Plume, with its little Fleur d' Lis, also emphasized the Parisian in her "Cosette."  (Yes, I was sad that Parisville wasn't available yet)
• Olivia's room is hot pink and watermelon green... this fabric fit that scheme beautifully.
• Olivia's mama is a very talented singer and song-writer; I figured her daughter might have a little bit of diva...so some glamour was a must.
• Tula herself gave some of the inspiration, with this quilt design...

To start, I had some simple HSTs (half-square triangles), but wasn't sure how I was going to lay them out.  

I decided to keep them all the same direction, and I added the little framed section because I wanted to put a piece of art in the middle (off to the side actually).

I moved it off to the side because to me, it balanced the symmetry of the HSTs by being a bit asymmetrical (that's what I was thinking at least).  

The scalloped edge is that little bit of diva I was talking about.  I did it by putting a glass lid on the edge and tracing the edge in and out.

For the quilting, I decided on simply echoing the movement of the triangles with long, diagonal straight lines on either side of the triangle seams.  I probably should have quilted some vertical lines too, but I'm happy with this look overall, and I was really excited to finish it.

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What I love about this quilt:

• All those glorious pinks
• The way the white anchors the design
• The interplay of the really strong, masculine triangles, with the grandiose florals, and feminine curve in the border
• The cute label (done with a couple selvage edges so the name of the fabric line and those cute little Fleur d' Lis could be shown off.)
• Pretty much everything.

What I don't love about this quilt:

• I'm not sure how I feel about the backing (it's a hot pink flannel from JoAnn's... it was on sale, and hey -- we're on a budget)

• I'm also not sure if I made the right binding choice.  I kind of wish I'd have gone with a solid green.  The binding is machine stitched, done on the bias, like in this tutorial.  With the bias binding, it was really easy to get around those curved edges.
• That's about it. :)

(Oh, and Steiger's usually sleeping while I do my photo shoots, but sometimes he's not.  This is the kind of thing he does on those days). :)

surfer circle around... done.

(Process Pledgy post)

I got the fabrics here.

And wanted to have it done before I left here.

But I didn't.

I did however, get it done before the end of August,



and its recipient now has it all to himself.

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I cannot lie... this thing felt a bit beastly before I got it done and mailed.

I started with this pile of fabric (all half-yard cuts).

The theme was Hawaiian, scrappy, and with those little surfing monkeys. 

We decided to use Julie's Circle Around design, and the quilt was to be twin-sized.

I sized the blocks up to 13 1/2" (with 9" circles I think), and a 5 x 7 layout.  While stitching, I had a little trouble with some of the blocks shifting on me --> I found using a glue stick to baste them before sewing worked the best.

If you look at that pile of fabric, you'll see relatively very few solids, and a majority of colors that are lighter in value.

Why I didn't think it through ahead of time, I don't know, but the Circle Around design relies on a lot of contrast.  Not only did I not buy any extra white, but the white didn't contrast well with those light turquoises.  I really spent a lot of time trying to coordinate the interplay of value, and solids with prints.

In the end I improvised and came up with this.

It did look scrappy, but then I wasn't sure if it felt too incongruent... and at this point, I was feeling a little bit panicky actually.  "What if his mama doesn't like it?"  This is a sick to the stomach feeling when you're making something for someone else.  I kept telling myself that she had liked the fabrics, and she had liked the design idea, and she had liked one of my progress pics... so I pressed on.

And then there was the back.

You saw the fabric above.  All half-yards... most of which had a 13.5" x WOF strip cut out of them so I could make my top.

Fortunately I had the fore-sight to pull a couple out of the pile ahead of time for the back, but this was a twin-sized quilt, and so I had to get quite scrappy.

The original plan had been to make his name big so that when you folded the top of the bed down, it showed up (slightly brilliant, I thought).  But it just wasn't working for me when I saw what I had left.  So I went with plan B for the name.

I thought personalizing the little surfboard I threw in there would be cute.

The top part of the back I think is my favorite part of the whole quilt.  

Jay took Steiger up to his dad's for an entire day, and this quilt back took me that entire day.

To quilt, I did horizontal wavy lines... you know, oceany. :)  Even with my needle in the down stop position, the weight of the quilt would occasionally pull on the stitching a bit (though I had a table to rest the bulk of it on next to me), but you definitely wouldn't notice it on a horse riding by.

This is the biggest quilt I've done start to finish by myself, and it pushed the limits of my little Janome.

Once I got this all quilted, washed, and photographed, I felt happy to send it on its way.  Once I got word back from Will's mama that she liked it, I felt even happier...and maybe even a tinge of pride.  

I used the proceeds from this quilt, plus a Visa Gift card I had, to buy 24 yards of batting while it was on sale at JoAnn's this weekend.

To summarize:

What I liked about this quilt:

- the squares with lots of contrast (the navy and white, or the bold blue and light blue, etc.)

- the top of the back (I loved that part for some reason)

- the little surfboard in the ocean scene

- no tucks in the quilting!!! (though I did catch the raw edge of a couple of the circles on the front)

- I didn't photograph it well, but I really liked the binding

- being able to go buy my batting (you know there's a problem when you're excited about batting, right?)

- seeing the pictures of its happy little owner  (probably my favorite part)

What I didn't like:

- feeling nervous while I was trying to make it work -- incorporating the vision of someone else in to your own interpretation is challenging

- the amount of time it took...partly due to me being nervous and uncertain as to how to proceed

- getting it through my machine for quilting

- my lack of planning regarding my choice of which solids to purchase (I ended up pulling quite a few from my own stash)

- feeling unsure of some of the fabric combos and their interplay with value and print

From now on, I'm sticking to baby quilts.  :)