I haven't blogged in awhile because I didn't have anything new to show. I have slowly been working on the last afghan, but I like to save knitting for when I am babysitting. Now that it is summer, and I have some time to myself, I have been working on another major project for the grand kids for Christmas. This is something that definitely needs to be done when no little ones are around.
I am making twin sized bed quilts for all of the kids, except for Ezra. He is still very small and will not be needing a bigger quilt for a while. I am making the quilts in block style; each with a large center block or four smaller large blocks for the center. The outsides will have small blocks with alternating colors, prints, or embroidered pictures. The larger center blocks have pictures appliqued to them. I have finally finished all the cutting, heat bonding, and appliqueing of these blocks. That means that I now have something to show. I still need to do some embroidery work on three of the blocks, but I took a picture of them as they are for now. So, here are the results of the past two weeks of work.
The first four blocks will go on Lucy's quilt, which has a puppy/kitty theme. The four large blocks will fill the center of the quilt. The outside blocks and one row of blocks between the upper two and the bottom two have alternating pattern blocks, which have puppies on a blue background and kitties on a pink background.
The next four blocks will be the center of the Super Hero quilts that will be for Ellis and Joey. Spiderman and Superman will be on the top, and Batman and Captain America will be on the bottom. The outside blocks will alternate with a print material and red block. The three different print materials have a Superman theme on one (these will be the corner blocks), a Super Hero theme print that has Spiderman and Captain America, along with other heroes on it, and the third print has a Batman theme. There will be one of each of the super heroes and the Batman print blocks along the top, bottom, and sides, alternating with the red. Both quilts will be identical, so I only needed to show one set.
The next block is a very large block which will be the whole center of the quilt. This Dora and Boots themed quilt will be for Lexi. The outside will have blocks of two different Dora and Boots prints. One of the prints has a purple background and the other has a green background. It will be a very bright quilt when it is finished.
The next two blocks are for Dot's and Zoe's quilts. These are the large blocks for the center. I showed both because they have a different colored background, although the Cinderellas are exactly the same. These quilts will have an extra two inch purple border around the large center block, and then, there will be smaller blocks that go around the outside of that border. These blocks will alternate with a colored block and an embroidered block. The embroidered blocks will tell the Cinderella story. The color of the first one is really a bright yellow and looks quite different from what it shows in the picture. I still need to do some embroidery work on these blocks to give more definition to the dresses.
Next, is Jackson's Thomas and Friends quilt. This was probably the hardest one for me to do. I really have a hard time with perspective drawing. I had a hard time getting the faces to look like the trains and to get the angles just right. Oh, there were so many little tiny pieces to cut out and try to get into place. Sewing them on was very time consuming and difficult. I still need to do some embroidery on the trains to give them more detail, and though you cannot see in the picture, there are some tracks going out from the back and from the front of each of the trains that need to be embroidered. The outside blocks will alternate with a Thomas and Friends print and with red, green, and white solid colored blocks.
The last quilt is for Portia. This is supposed to be a model of her family's new farm in Maine. I took a picture of the barns while standing on the balcony that is outside of the master bedroom upstairs. The barns are really a natural cedar shingle, but this is the best I could do for the color. Other than the color, the barns look very much like they should. I found some really cute material with a John Deere theme on it. The tractors and the little animals were cut from that material. They do not yet have any cows or horses, but they plan to have some in the future. They do have one John Deere tractor, but it is really just an over sized lawn mower. It is not very practical for their use, but these are the pictures I could get. The outside blocks will alternate with the print material and yellow and green solid colored blocks. On the yellow and green solid blocks, I have appliqued sheep and horses cut from the print material. However, they also have pigs and goats on their farm, but since there were no pictures of those animals on the printed material, I downloaded some pictures of a goat and a pig and copied them onto ink jet printer material and appliqued them onto the yellow and green blocks also. I could not use the cow picture for these blocks, because it was not a full cow picture. There were no back legs to it. That is the reason I have the cow sticking its head out from the side of the barn. The last picture shows the four different blocks that have the animals appliqued onto them.
