Quilting: Quilts You Can Make for Kids

Quilting: Quilts You Can Make for Kids - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. This is a more kids, baby size quilt and again, it is just your very basic, geometric design, so I cut about six inch squares in lots of different colors, pieced those together and then cut these strips that are the same width and pieced those in between each set of squares. It is just a fun way to use bright colors and have them contrast against the more neutral brown, and again, I used just matching thread for the quilting, a spiral shape inside the squares and the basic stippling around the columns. I tend to keep my quilting stitches pretty consistent, in case you could not tell, and I like to use kind of the same basic designs and again, because the quilting, for me, is about just adding sort of some dimension that mirrors the images but I do not want it to take away from just the basic design of the quilt. This is a little log cabin quilt and I do not know if you can see that it is four blocks pieced together so each one of the four blocks is a log cabin block and it is actually a fairly, it is a very traditional quilt block but I like it because I think it is very easy to just make it modern and fun, just by the nature of how it is done and it is basically, you start with one little square like this and you piece strips around it and kind of just in a spiraling out like this you can keep going as long as you want. This one I did about three out from the center on each side and once I had the four log cabin blocks, pieced them together, and gain with the matching color, I actually did I think of these quilting stitches as just a little bit more of a contrast instead of mirroring the strips, they are obviously circular, so it is a little bit, and then the spirals inside the squares so I kind of, I thought it sort of softens the angles and the fact that it is much more geometric design and I like the effect. This one is made using patchwork and reverse appliqué so I stitched each of these little, they look like beach ball things together on the machine and then for reverse appliqué, that means that they are layered underneath this fabric so this red background is not a solid piece; it is had holes cut out of it, and then you place the patchwork underneath and sort of turn the edges under and stitch it down by hand, and I know I just kind of mirrored the shapes within the beach balls for the quilting, and then I did this kind of wispy quilting design in the background because it kind of made me think of balls flowing in the air and I kind of wanted a windy effect in the background. Last one is again a patchwork background and then appliqué on top, so I just use, and for me, I remember thinking when I first made this one, oh my gosh, I am using black and white fabrics because I usually do not do that, but it is just long strips pieced together on the machine and then I just cut out a bunch of circles and kind of randomly placed them on there in a way I thought looked good and then appliquéd them down around the edges. So, again, just like your basic stripes and spots but I thought it was kind of a fun design and I actually here I did use a not solid color background because I thought the black and white was kind of a fun way to add some interest with the binding and I am really pleased with the black and white background, I usually do not use a lot of neutral colors, I think it is kind of a fun way to make the other colors really pop.