Time to Finish a PHD (Project Half Done)

Early last year I posted pictures of quilts I was working on for two young friends of mine, Samantha, who is now 10 years old, and her sister Lauren who is 18 months younger. Predictably, there's a lot of pink and they definitely reflect the different personalities of the girls.

I had intended to give the quilts as holiday gifts in 2012 and finished Samantha's quilt a year and a half ago, but got bogged down on Lauren's. When you have sisters who live in the same household, you either have to have two quilts or zero quilts! So I've been carrying around Samantha's quilt as part of my trunk show for quite a while.

This obviously has to change -- I need to give the girls their quilts before they become teenagers and start loving purple and black instead of pink!




The center of Lauren's quilt -- Using variegated rayon thread, I stitched freehand flowers randomly all over the pieced area of the quilt. Lauren professes not to like math, but says she finds it "interesting", so I gave her some things to contemplate when she looks at her quilt. Some of the flowers have four petals, some five, six or seven. Each petal may have two to six layers depending on the size space I wanted to fill.

These math exercises should be at least as effective as counting sheep before sleep overtakes her, right?


Closeup of the flowers...


Small tendrils fill the spaces between the flowers and keep the quilting density even.


I used two different variegated pink rayons from Sulky to stitch all the flowers.


Now for the borders -- for the two inner borders I used HW146 from the Stencil Company (www.quiltingstencils.com).


Mirror imaged the hearts, using the lighter of the two rayon threads in the top of the machine and Mettler Silk Finish (100% cotton) in color #805, a medium value corally-pink.


For the outer border, I'm trying to choose between two designs. Lauren loves flowers and butterflies and this stencil fills the space well.


I like this one better, but it doesn't fill the space, which means that I would either have to cut the border smaller after I stitch it or figure out how to make it wider. This quilt is already smaller than her sister's, so cutting down the border doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I decided to use this design and then echo the scallops until the space is filled, maybe twice at roughly a 5/8" interval? Although, if the echos are 1/2" or less, I could use the echo free motion foot and not have to mark it. Tempting....

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Location:Palmdale CA