Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Half a charm and a mission.

Eds: If your name is Kathleen (aka: Poodles) and you are a pregnant pal of mine living in Jackson, Miss., you are barred from reading this blog post. That is unless you WANT to feel like the kid who snuck a peak at all their presents before Christmas and then had the WORST SANTA VISIT EVER. Understood?

Moons and moons and moons ago, I wanted to try my hand at Amy Butler's "Charm" quilt. I got distracted, made other quilts, lent my sewing machine to a friend for weeks at a time so she could get ready for her wedding and just sort of forgot about the plan.

And then, my dear friend Kathleen got knocked up. While I've said, children freak me the hell out, I love her and her husband all the way down to the bottom of my cold, black heart. So I decided to help throw her a baby shower. (I'm also helping with a kick-ass nursery decorating project. )

But I wanted to do something else for my peeps and their expanding family, something a little more me. I toyed with buying a great print on Etsy, like this one. Or this one.

And then I decided to sew baby Josie a charm quilt (scroll down to the bottom to see it. Or just look at the pic on the top of this page.) The hitch, of course, being that the thing that makes this quilt so damn cool is the applique on the top. And uh, I don't know how to applique. But whatever, I'm a smart girl. (I'm also hoping the divas down at my favorite quilting store will be kind enough to walk me through how to do this.)

I spent some time this weekend raiding my stash and whipped up the main part of the quilt on Saturday.


Here's some pretend artsy views:



I've picked a bunch of fabric to do the applique "footballs." Although I know I won't need this much. I'm going to play around to see what works best.


I've still got a lot of work ahead of me, but I love what I've got so far. I'm already thinking about how to finish this one off. I'm thinking instead of a pieced back, maybe some pretty and soft pale yellow minky.

So crafty peeps and F.O.K. (Friends of Kathleen) what do you think? Any tips, instruction, handholding, words of advice about doing applique? I'm all ears.

And Poodles, if you kept reading, your ass is grass. :-)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

amazing already! what beautiful fabric selections. I didn't read the whole post to know what you are asking -- because, really, well, i wouldn't have any insight. But the beginning of your project is smashing dawling, just smashing.

samira said...

ashley,
what you've done is sooooo beautiful...my mom is a seamstress and has a monogramming/applique machine...i don't know anything about it, but i can ask her. i am so impressed by your creation...way to make it girly but not too girly. i know they will love it.

The Modern Gal said...

I love it! And am totally thinking about commissioning you to do a quilt for me, though I haven't decided what I'm going for yet.