My mother's visit included many adventures: Ziplining and hiking in the Redwood forest, wine tasting, touring San Francisco, comedy Improv night, shopping, Paint Nite and of course, time in the quilt studio!
My mother wanted to make some items to bring back for her co-workers and staff. First we whipped up some zippered bags featuring bbq, flamingos and ocean wave motifs. All six bags were made assembly line style, with my mother proving to be a very efficient and proficient assistant! She selected the fabrics and made quick/neat work of all the pressing needs, reassembling the zippers and zig zag stitching the insides. That left me with following the pattern, cutting the fabrics and installing the zippers. While we were in San Francisco, she picked up some Ghirardelli chocolates to put inside each bag for a sweet surprise!
My mother wanted to make some items to bring back for her co-workers and staff. First we whipped up some zippered bags featuring bbq, flamingos and ocean wave motifs. All six bags were made assembly line style, with my mother proving to be a very efficient and proficient assistant! She selected the fabrics and made quick/neat work of all the pressing needs, reassembling the zippers and zig zag stitching the insides. That left me with following the pattern, cutting the fabrics and installing the zippers. While we were in San Francisco, she picked up some Ghirardelli chocolates to put inside each bag for a sweet surprise!
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| Sew Sweet Gift Bags for Co-workers |
Next up was two reversible tote bags featuring a San Francisco themed fabric, commemorating our day visiting San Francisco: one for a co-worker and one for herself!
But the big project was collaborating on a baby quilt for a friend who was expecting her first child this summer! Prior to mom's arrival, we discussed possible pattern ideas and she fell in love with the Zig Zag Love pattern. Once again, mom proved to be an exception quilting assistant. Her first duty was to take lead on the fabric pull. Originally, we pulled yellow prints and solids but soon realized a second color was needed. Teal charm squares were added with a few yellow/teal prints, and set on a background of solid white. I took care of cutting the fabrics while mom got to work on assembling the block units. Once the blocks were assembled, it was time to lay out the precious pieced hearts. We opted for alternating rows of yellow and teal hearts. Mom went to work laying out the hearts and did a fantastic job of creating contrast between the various blocks and balancing different values and textures! Once all the rows were sewn together, we decided to make the quilt a bit larger by adding border fabrics to the top and bottom. We found the perfect zig zag print on my stash and supplemented with some small scale prints that read as a solid!
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| Quilt Assistant Extraordinaire! |
We managed to finish piecing the top and pin baste it for quilting in a little over 1 day. We even spent some time discussing quilting motifs!! Yup--we make quite the quilting duo!!
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| Quilting |
After sketching some figure eights and loop de loops, I sketched out some feathers which really appealed to mom. They turned out to be super fun to free motion quilt in the negative space (zig zags and diamonds) as well as into alternating zig zags of the border print. The quilting was so much fun that I completed it in just one day!!
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| Before and After Feathery Fun |
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| I Love Quilting Feathers!! |
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| "Zig Zag Baby Love", 25"x35" |
So beautiful Mel and Tweety. So bright and fun. Thanks for sharing your adventures of your Mum's visit.
ReplyDeleteAwww...thanks Roo! We had a fabulous week, which flew by entirely too fast!
DeleteWow, ya'll were quiet the team!
ReplyDeleteYes we were! It was so much fun teaming up for these projects and enjoying some mother/daughter bonding time!!
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