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Sunday, November 16, 2014

Amelia's 1st birthday Quilt with Minkee Backing and Binding.


I wanted to give sweet baby Amelia a "Katie Quilt" for her birthday.  I used everything from my stash.  I started with this large piece of minkee fleece that I had leftover from another project.  It's super soft and BIG so I didnt' have to piece fabric together for the backing.   I have used Minkee for  backing before, but I always used batting ALSO, but this time I left out the batting.  For a large, bed-size quilt I think batting is fine, but I wanted something that she could lug around herself, so it needed to be LIGHT too.   


Double Sided Minkee is thick enough that it doesn't require batting.  Also, it gives a very nice effect when free-motion quilted.  However there is a slight downside when you omit the batting.  When there is no batting, there is nothing for the fleece to stick to.  The batting acts as a stabilizer so that your fleece doesn't shift around.  To remedy that problem I just used lots of safety pins in the basting process.  


For the quilt TOP I pieced together feminine prints of pink and grey.  Honestly, I'm not real sure what I was going for here - just scrappy I guess!!  Who knows, it was late when I came up with this design ;c)  I think a quilt looks best when you incorporate elements from the back on the front, and vice versa.  So for the front, I appliqued circles of minkee and also used the minkee as the binding.

** I have a tutorial on how to do self-binding with fleece HERE**

 And for the backing I took one of the pink floral prints and used it to applique her name.
In this last picture you can get a good look at the quilting design I used.   I always want to try these fun large-scale quilting motifs, but am always too scared.   I love the look of all-over free-hand feathers, but every time I attempt them I regret it.   I think maybe it's because I think every tiny bit of space needs to be quilted - and everything needs to be touching.   
So for my last couple projects I have been trying to use more negative space.   I think just as rainbow colors only look good with a good amount of WHITE.   . . . "fancy" quilting only look good when there is some negative space?  Maybe?   I'm working on it anyway! 


3 comments:

  1. What a darling little (big) quilt! I love the name applique. Smart to use the fabric on both sides...it adds some continuity to an already pretty quilt.

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  2. OMG! One year already? whoohoo pretty quilt for a pretty baby! Are you gonna do the mystery for her, too? It does use pink this year.

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  3. Hi Katie ,
    a long time friend Meloney Funk suggested that I might be able to help you with info about labels
    Labels are what I do look and lmk if I can help you with answers about labels
    http://itisfinishedquiltlabels.com/

    ReplyDelete