Fleur de Lis Quilts and Accessories

Christmas is so close and I'd really like to turn over the last of Angie's quilts to her before then.  That would mean she can give the quilts to her grandchildren as part of their Christmas gifts, and also it would free me up to do some of my own sewing during the almost two weeks of vacation that I'll have. 



Josh's quilt has been on the design wall for some time now, so I thought it might be good to get back on that one.  I had about a third of the blocks completed and almost all them rest cut out.  That meant I was able to finish the top during the week.  I loaded it on the long arm this morning and promptly decided that I wanted to repeat the sea turtle motif.


I started out by drawing the motif on my trusty little white board.  Once I figured out the basics I redrew the design with a different colored marker, trying to turn it into a continuous line drawing.  It worked....sort of, but I could see that I'd be able to use the motif.


I discovered a neat trick in the process.  I normally clip the board to the metal clad door in the studio, so the magnetic clips just always stay on the board.  Those same clips, moved to the side of the board helps to hold the board on the top bar of the long arm frame.  


I could easily see the design as I worked the first few onto the quilt.  This allows me to free hand "draw" the design without getting too mixed up.


I decided that the turtles would go on the large blocks and wanted to quilt some "X's" in the nine patches.  The "X's" simply did not work.  I can't seem to make a straight line and didn't want to pull out rulers.  Stippling seemed to be the answer.  


After dropping in one or two turtles, I realized that I needed to wait to quilt the nine patches because the turtles ran over onto the adjoining blocks.  In the end, I'm much happier with the stippling and like the individuality of the sea turtles. 


They show up on the back of the quilt since I used a soft grey thread.  This photo shows the backing fabric as white but it's really a light green fabric.  That and the darker green on the front both came from mom's stash.

All that's left is the binding and label.  Those will be added this week.


I'm hoping that Josh likes the sea turtles.  Since he asked for black and green fabrics, I'm not worried about those.  What do you think?  Will the sea turtles work for a 13 year old boy?