I am grateful for the amazing ideas brought to me by my customers. It pushes me to try new things! In this case, my customer had some baby clothes she wanted made into a quilt. But this quilt would be a wall hanging. It was based on wall stickers she had in her baby’s room. She sent these two inspiration photos.
As I have shared on my social media, the design process starts with emails or phone calls with my customers. In this case, my customer said she wanted me to use as much of the clothes as possible and gave me suggestions for colors. With this in mind, I headed to the quilt shop. My customer initially wanted a solid beige background but eventually we changed it to the slightest beigish green with a tiny print. The tree is very dark, but actually has various shades of deep brown in it.
I started with the elephant. I applied Heat N Bond lite to wide sections of fabric and then drew my design on the paper. Once the complete layout was set, I ironed all of the pieces to the background piece. This was not easy to do since I had everything in position and the ironing board is narrow. The pieces were appliqued in different ways. For the elephant I used a narrow zig zag stitch.
I used the blanket stitch for the leaves and the tree.
I added some stitching directly to the background fabric for the bird house and swing.
The backing fabric and binding is the fabric used in the swing. It’s a deep green with greenish beige dots.
My customer wanted her daughter’s name on the quilt. We considered on a heart in the corner but settled on the tree. I did my best hand embroidery!
I started the quilting process by stitching down all the branches using a variegated thread.
The quilt shop owner suggested I make wide, wavy, quilting lines that follow the flow of the tree. This was a first for me who has only done “stitch-in-the-ditch!” It was challenging! I drew lines with a Frixion pen and used a walking foot. But it was still hard!
As this heads to Switzerland, I was excited to see finished product and to consider the possibilities of other types of wall art made using baby clothes or any old clothes!
