My First Quilt Design…The Reveal!

I had been thinking about this design for quite a while but I didn’t even want to attempt to put pencil to paper before all my swaps and Christmas gifts were put to bed.  So around the beginning of December, I started the preliminary sketches.

I knew I wanted to include both stitching and piecing as part of the overall design, so I did the initial layout on graph paper.  It took me a couple of days just to finalize the layout, even before attempting the line drawings for the stitched blocks.  I needed to complete the layout first in order to determine the final sizes for the stitcheries.

I researched and studied the characters from public domain designs and it took me about a week to complete the stitchery patterns.  And so the journey began.

I stitched and pieced over the Christmas holidays and gave the flimsy to Nancy…my friend and machine quilter extraordinaire…during the first week of January and gave her ‘carte blanche’ to work her magic on it.  Everything that Nancy touches is an original work of art and I left the quilting part in her trusty and capable hands.  We met this past Friday and if I didn’t know better, I would have believed it if someone had told me that the longarm quilting fairy resides at Nancy’s house.  What an incredible job she did!  Every square inch is custom done.

The quilt is called “ Raggedy and Friends”.  It is made up of 12 blocks and is done in my favorite scrappy style.  I spent the better part of the weekend affixing the binding and adding the decorative vintage buttons and glass beads.

I apologize for the blurry photos but I think you can make out the stitcheries and the amazing quilting.

It had crossed my mind to offer it as a free Block of the Month but then had second thoughts since there are so many beautiful BOM’s out there already from which to choose.  What do you think?

Thanks for allowing me to share my first full size quilt design.  After designing in the decorative painting industry for almost 25 years, I have found it very difficult to shut down that part of my brain.  I guess I’m happiest when I’m designing and really all that has changed is the medium…fabric in lieu of paint.  I even find that I’m using a very similar color palette to what I use when I paint.

And now it’s back to the drawing board.  I have so many other ideas floating around in my head I just wish that there were more hours in a day. 

Having said that, remember that this Friday, the 5th of February, is the First Friday of the month, which means that it’ll be time for the next FFF (First Friday Freebie).  Think  ♥’s!

Happy stitching!

Kaaren ♥