Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Gift for Grandma Part I


This is to be turning out to be Gifts Fortnight. Must be the time of the year: end-of-school combined with spring birthdays combined with Mother's Day. I have a few more posts coming up of this ilk, and then we'll move on to other things.

This is Emily's first quilt. 

It is made of charm squares that I got as a long-ago gift. Since I don't quilt, or make tiny doll-sized anythings, I saved them for when the girls became interested in Small Sewing. Turns out they want to pick and buy their own fabric instead of using whatever we have in the house. Wonder who they picked that bad habit up from. The other day, I asked them what they wanted to do, and they all, in one accord, shouted, "Go fabric shopping!" Very strange. 

Back to the quilt. Some months back, Emily wanted to sew a quilt. I was not about to cut out small fabric bits for her, so I gave her my charm pack and said, "choose 16". She did, and we worked on pinning them in rows of 4, and sewing straight lines on their backsides.  Then we pinned the rows together and made a big square.  

She also sewed on the backing and top-stitched the binding. I helped by mitering the corners and basting the binding frame onto the quilt, which was too tricky for her, so all she needed to do was stitch. 

There is something about quilts and binding quilts that really brings out the most anal aspects of my sewing personality. Almost as much as piecing print on my garments, I think. Which is ironic because I don't quilt, and probably never seriously will (not enough patience). I'm more easy-going with with doll purses and clothes and child-made tote-bags, but with this quilt, I really had to grit my teeth to allow all the unmeeting corners and unflat seams and meandering top-stitching to go uncorrected. This is Emily's Mother's Day gift to her grandma in Singapore and I wanted every stitch to be hers, where possible. Besides, Grandma would know at once where I'd cheated and helped her!

13 comments:

  1. It looks wonderful; and if I may be catty for a moment, there are one or two very well known and widely followed quilt bloggers who produce comparable quality.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Love it! I came over from my feed reader just to make that same point! ("Wonky" doesn't really do it for me, but man do they sound proud of their points not lining up - and disparaging of anyone who does!)

      Delete
  2. Emily's quilt looks MUCH better than my first quilt (which I made just a year or two ago!)

    ReplyDelete
  3. So fun. Well done, Emily! (And well done, L, for letting E do it!) Did she use the Ikea machine?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Beautiful! Way to go, Emily! And I can say without a doubt that it will be dearly loved by her grandma!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great job, Emily! Like MaryAnne, my first quilt was definitely not as good as hers...particularly the binding.) I love that your girls want (and like) to sew. I hope I can pass it on to my little girls as they get older. Question: when did you start letting them sew with the machine? My oldest is 3 and is so interested in what I do. I would love to capitalize on that, you know?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Harmony! I think they started on my big machine when they were about 5. But when the middle daughter was about 3 and interested in sewing, I let her embroider something by hand. Nothing fancy, just up-down-up-down running stitch to outline a heart. Here's the post:

      http://www.ikatbag.com/2010/04/over-to-kids.html

      Delete
  6. That is a heartwarmingly lovely project.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wow.. my jaw just hit the floor :) Good job Emily! Grandma will be soo proud..
    BTW, I am ashamed of myself..

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nice job Emily! It's beautiful. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Well done Emily :) My two youngest boys have just caught the sewing bug so perhaps a simple quilt might be the project for the summer break and hopefully ready for our yukky Scottish winter.

    ReplyDelete
  10. That is so cool, she did a really good job!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi, I love this quilt! What a lovely fabric and colors...

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for talking to me! If you have a question, I might reply to it here in the comments or in an email.