Quilting Drew's Asteroid Quilt.

As of late, I have been working on getting the Asteroid quilt quilted.  It has been going together so easily, I'm not sure if it's because Dianne is such an excellent pinner (which she is!) or if it has to do with the fact that I am getting so much better at quilting (which I am!) or if it is because of the fusible batting I am using.

I never had Dianne pin a quilt for me before, and I learned a few things from watching her,  She uses a LOT of tape.  She totally smooths out each and every layer so not a single wrinkle is in sight.  She also tapes the batting to the floor, not just backing.  The quilt sandwich stayed put for the entire pinning session, and I was most impressed.  I will be following these steps in the future!

The batting used for this quilt is FUSIBLE batting, Hobbs 80/20 Heirloom.  I never used fusible batting before.  No, I take that back!  I used the batting scraps from the Asteroid in the Kitty baby quilt I just made.  It was smaller, so I sewed the strips together that we had trimmed off from The Asteroid quilt after it was pinned.  I actually ironed that batting to the baby quilt top and bottom, and I was not impressed with how it looked.  I decided I would never use it again!  However, Drew's Asteroid quilt was NOT ironed.  The batting felt a bit "tacky" and was stuck together when we unrolled it to lay it out for pinning.  I thought something was wrong with that batting.  I don't recall ordering "fusible" batting (it came in the mail from Connecting Threads.)  That unironed fusible tacky batting must keep the batting and top/bottom from sliding around.  The more I quilted it, the more I liked it!!  I'll have to re-think that "never again" part...

I have been stitching in the ditch around the stars and shapes in the pattern quilt top.  I may or may not do some decorative quilting when I am through with the "stabelizing" phase of the quilt.  We'll see how it looks and how much time I have.  Here's how the quilting looks:

 

Emergency Baby Quilt

Monday night when I got home from a  Quilt Guild meeting, my Hunny reminded me of a Baptism we need to attend on Sunday, which was only 5 days away.)  Yes, I remembered.  Oh, and by the way, "do you think you could whip up a baby quilt that we can give as a gift?"  ARGHHHHH!

But I can do it.  I have an idea for a cool baby quilt from a picture I saved from the web. Since this is for a girl baby, my cats will all be pink be pink.  It will look something like this:

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It said on the web that this quilt will finish off at 41".  That's all I had to go by, I do not have a pattern.  Just the name of the quilt (Cat Nap), it's finished size, and this picture.  So I started doing the math. Trial and error in the beginning, but then REAL math for the corner triangles.  Starting with a 25" center square on point, add a 2.5" border, so it is now 29".  The formula for corner triangles, is finished block size divided by 1.414 plus 7/8" for seam allowances (round up to the nearest 1/8"), which will equal the size of the square you need to cut in half on the diagonal for 2 corners.  SO! 29 divided by 1.414 is about 20.5", plus 7/8"would = 21 3/8".  I used  a 22" square just to be on the safe side, yes, it was a little larger than necessary, but I could easily trim it to size and leave that quarter inch seam allowance for sewing on the final border.  The head is a 7.5" square, the shoulders is a 3.5" square cut in half on the diagonal, and the ears are 60 degree triangles cut at 2.5" tall.  Paws are 3" x 5", rounded off on one end and appliqued on after the border was sewn.  There, that's my pattern!

I went off to the fabric store to get some fleece for the backing, and decided against an outer border.  I whipped up this quilt from start to finish in just 4 days.  Here is my version of Cat Nap, front and back!

  

The original quilt had claws on the cat too, which I decided to leave off.  Claws on kitties make them mean or mad, which is cute, but not for a baby.  (my opinion).  I also used circles of a reddish pink batik for the eyes, and added black pupils in the circles.  I think it's very cute!

Cute eyes

I basically did this the same as I did the seasonal Skinnies, applique the pieces, and stitch all around.  I added more quilting then on a skinnie though.  Also, I free-motioned the  whiskers and mouth before I added that square to the quilt so black thread wouldn't show on the back of the quilt.  I didn't want to use the applique stitch for the eyes and noses, the curves are pretty tight.  So I did a very small zigzag around them, and that worked perfectly.  All done in less than 4 days.  I'm pretty proud of myself!