dragonflies

I'm a bit behind (understatement) on updating the blog with my projects. I'm aiming for a post a week until I'm caught up.

I make a quilt for every new niece or nephew after they arrive. Currently there are 9 ... so it's not that many quilts.

K was born the end of July and I tried to have her quilt finished by Christmas. (I bought this fabric and started working on it for her older brother - who the ultrasound claimed was a girl. He got a yellow duck quilt and the first dragonfly quilt went to another niece. My sister loved this pattern and the fabric, so I knew if she ever had another girl, I would be making a second dragonfly quilt.)

The pattern comes from thimble-art;. I've made several of these patterns (bear and bunny, ducks, and the dragonfly) and have a couple more in the 'to-be-done' pile (airplanes, dinosaurs). They involve paper piecing. I like paper piecing because of how accurate they turn out. I'm not fond of the time spent tearing off the paper (and using tweezers to pull off all of the little pieces). These patterns also involve 'little' pieces with picky placement (lots of basting) to have them look right. They are easy, but they do take some time to get them right.

I had all of the 'pieces' sewn and spent the Christmas break sewing them together, sewing the heads down by hand, and embroidering the antennae.

My sister and I had an adventure at the fabric store looking for fabric to go between the dragonflies. After looking at what seemed to be hundreds of prints - and entertaining the clerks at Hancock Fabrics one evening - we picked a Kona cotton solid in mint. (We really do love prints ... but none of them worked.)

The quilt was put on the frames around noon on one day and finished by noon the next day. We quilted around the dragonfly squares, a heart in the solid squares, around the boarder stripes, and outlined the dragonfly head and bodies. The head and body stitching resulted in many bent needles and muttered words. In fact I think there was a bit of a discussion on who had to quilt them. It looks great from the back, but they were not easy to quilt.

K. had a great time sitting up to the quilt while it was on the frames and patting it with her hands. I think she liked the batting. :)


The quilt was finished a week after Christmas ... but I don't think K. minded.