Thanks to many, and a new mini Petra-dactyl quilt

It has been a while since I have blogged, and since I have sewn much. But I do have a lot to share, and I'll try not to overburden this post! I have some thanks to parcel out first.

I recently received this beautiful fat eights bundle of Peacock Lane from a giveaway at Very Berry Handmade, from the UK shop M is for Make. I have no solid plans yet for it, but I better make it lovely, since the designer of the fabric is in my quilt guild.

I also won this adorable wall hanging from Nellie's Niceties. The center of the Dresden is embroidered with a woodland scene, and the whole bit is hand quilted. I am lucky to have it! I would not make anything like this myself, since it is beyond the scope of my skills!

Lastly, I won 6 one yard cuts of the new Parson Grey Curious Nature line. I am so psyched to work with these, I am thinking of attacking a hexagon quilt finally, because they would look fabulous in one. Now to get motivated to do the cutting. These I won from the Free Spirit blog, which is always having low-entry giveaways that are very generous. I recently won an entire fat quarter bundle of Taza from them too.

Whew! Now that I have caught up with all that, some sewing to show. I made another mini quilt for a birthday gift for a one year old. We call her Petradactyl, because her name is Petra and my husband thinks she sounds like a pteradactyl when she yells. (You know, because we all know firsthand what a pteradactyl sounds like.) And since I have been experimenting with reverse applique lately, I had to try it out again.

 I embroidered the nickname in two different colors and fonts to emphasize her name (thanks to my sister for the lesson and the floss!) and then quilted some air current-type lines in white to fill in background.

 I used some of my fat eights of Heirloom for the patchwork, which was very randomly cut and assembled. I laid some natural muslin over it, and reverse appliqued it, then echo quilted the shape in variegated yellow and purple.

  Bound in Heirloom scraps, and off it goes to Petra! The finished mini measures about 32.5" x 22.5".

The back is some pieces I had in my stash, the cute larger pieces being FQs I received from The Intrepid Thread a while back, though I have no idea about designer or line. The binding doesn't necessarily coordinate, but I had to use Heirloom again! It will likely hang on the wall anyway, so I doubt it will be an issue.
So happy with it!

Mini quilt challenge entry- Shaaarrk!

I made this mini quilt in response to the Modern Mini Quilt Challenge from Ellison Lane Quilts. It measures 19" x 21.5" and is super cool.


I have wanted to try making a reverse applique quilt with patchwork ever since I saw this amazing quilt from Dan at Piece and Press. I knew it would take many tries to pull off an amazing piece like this, so I wanted to get trying! I love sharks and worked in shark research for a summer in college, so I knew what animal I had to make. They are as old as dinosaurs, so the connection was complete.

I made the grey patchwork square first, and loved the way it looked all on its own, but I forged on. I took out my shark books and found some pictures I liked, then drew them only as lines to see how well they would translate to patchwork. I picked this shape because I thought the plain side view was not graphically interesting enough. It is a little played out, in other words.

I loved the shark after I cut it out, but it was clear I needed to add the eye and the mouth and nose lines for the applique to read as a shark. So this is really a skill builder for me. I almost called in my sister but resisted.

Then I quilted on some wave lines to look like water, which I am pretty pleased with. I tried variegated blue thread thinking it would look cool, but it just got lost in the blue fabric, so white it is.

Overall, good lessons, fun time making it, and a nice piece for my shark loving household. Case in point: my toddler identifies the size of his bites relative to shark species and their size,
i.e. a lemon shark bite < tiger shark bite < megalodon bite.

Yes, we are bio (and shark) nerds. Love it.

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