Red-Blue-Yellow Doll Quilt and Others

The red-blue-yellow piece that I started here is now a completed top, and it is stitched to its Cuddle fabric back. The quilting will wait till the last two have been attached to their backs and I can change to red thread. No point in rethreading the needle more than I have to. Here is the top.

20 x 20

I’m pleased with it. I’d miscalculated before, thinking it under 20 inches; since it measures 20, I’m not adding borders.

After I cut the remaining pieces needed and got them on the design wall, I moved a couple to get a better balance of color than I could “see” in my imagination. (“Visual designs need to be evaluated visually,” Elizabeth Barton (at least that is where I read it; it may be an axion.) )

Next I studied the sketch.

Since I don’t like Y-seams, I added markings noting the units that could be combined in straight line stitching. I used it to guide transporting pieces to the sewing machine and the sewing itself. A time or two I’d have been confused without it.

As I started to contrast the quick sewing to the slower sewing for improv, I revised my thnking.  Both take planning, but at different points in the process. That this went together faster was an illusion, true only if I ignored the planning. Improv piecing shifts the design from one sitting to step-by-step cutting, measuring and evaluating. Sometime I’ll have to check my theory with a timer.

My plan was to make five doll quilts, ten if possible for the upcoming Toy N Joy event that the Firefighters sponsor as well as gifts for children rescued without their own toys.

I have 13 tops (counting the red-blue-yellow one). This star uses the last square of the truck fabric left from a bunk quilt I’d made earlier. The flying geese made to form the star left me with “bonus” triangles that I made into pinwheels to go with the bear fabric that someone tossed my way at the quilt retreat.

I had two other sources of pinwheels.  “Bonus” triangles from previous pink and green lotto blocks, and a little packet of already trimmed half-square-triangle blocks that I bought cheap at the Aurora Colony museum.

All “bonus” triangles don’t end up in pinwheels; notice the pink triangle half border on the yellow star. And the yellow ones made a partial border for the red and white stars made from the Aurora packet.

Of the thirteen tops, eight are finished and all but two are sewn to their backings. Quilting, as I said before, is being delayed. Quilting is stitch0-in-the-ditch. There is no batting to hold in place, so unquilted areas are rather large. I did not retake photos to show the quilting since it is so simple. The “fanciest” I got was wavy lines on the mostly aqua pinwheel quilt, but a tendency to pucker caused me to abandon that idea. Here is one photo of a quilted doll quilt.

It even has a pieced back: The piece of green wasn’t wide enough, but I had some color sample pieces. I wish the soft feel of the Cuddle fabric could be uploaded.

Doll quilts are fun because they work up so fast; however, they do not make much of a dent in the scrap pile!

ETA I’m joining up with Scraphappy Saturday. And NewFO link. Check out what others started.

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