Friday, April 3, 2020

Cowboy Kids' Quilt

Note: Some of my photos are not showing up.  This is a known issue with Blogger and they are working on fixing it. 

Before we started our feast of felt food, my son and I made a few quilts together.  Our most recent was a western/cowboy-themed quilt that will be donated to a local children's hospital.  This has the distinction of being the quilt where we first tried Kathleen's suggestion of moving the sewing machine pedal to the table and having him press it with his hands.  Game Changer!


The quilt is one I cut and kitted to work on at Project Linus meetings, then never got to.  Because all the pieces were cut out, it counted as started and is therefore a UFO and eligible for my PhD (projects half done) with Quilting Gail.


The patter in Watercolor Garden from the Spring 2016 issue of Quilter's World.  The big pieces made it great for sewing with Fire Monkey--it went together quickly.  The fabrics started with the great cowboy and cowgirl print that I believe is an older Michael Miller print; my mom gave it to me.  She also gave me the covered wagons--that fabric is the gift that keeps on giving because I keep thinking that I used the last of it and then I find more!  The boots were donated to the Project Linus chapter and the bandana fabric and red were fabrics I just had, there wasn't enough of the bandana print so I added in some solid red.

House stitches
For the quilting, we started with just the grid of the large blocks.  Fire Monkey really loves the "fancy stitches" so I let him pick each line.  His favorite were these houses.

Star stitches

I really like the stars, he picked those out too.

loop/lasso stitches

He started with loops, I think they look like lassos and are very appropriate!


And then he needed one more so I suggested one I tought looked like chicken feet.  Well, he cracked up at "chicken feet" and had to use that one!  At this point I was almost out of red thread, so this one is a brownish-red.

I wish I had taken a picture of the quilt with just te fancy stitches. I decided that since we did the grip of the big blocks that it just wasn't enough quilting so I added a 4" cross hatch on my own.

I'm honestly not super thrilled with this quilt; I don't like the cross-hatch stitches mixed with the fun stitches, the directional fabrics are frequently upside down, and it honestly just looks a mess to me.  I'm hoping that someone appreciates the cowboys and cowgirls, though. And Fire Monkey did have fun, especially with the fancy stitches.  This is my 10th completed project toward my goal of 52 completed projects in 2020.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! That is some goal. I usually push for six! Lol! Love how you worked with Fire Monkey. You sure do have a great selection of pretty stitches to choose from. I'm sure later down the road FM will treasure the moments.

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  2. Congrats on getting one quilt closer to your PHD this year. Sounds like Fire Monkey had a great time. He picked some really cool stitches to try out. It's easy to forget that done is often more important than perfect. The fabrics and the cool stitches will be a big hit with a little one who gets it as their very own.

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  3. Oh, I love this and think someone else will too. We are often so critical of our work. It is interesting that Fire Monkey likes the decorative stitches. I wonder if it has to do with watching the movement of the machine, which is so different with some of those stitches. Thanks for the mention!

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