Braedyn's Flowers: an Applique Quilt

So this is my first baby quilt done almost totally by hand and totally freehand on the design of the appliques.  The only thing machine stitched is the border edging, made up of patchwork squares sewn together on a machine, then ironed and folded around the edges of the quilt and hand sewn in a hem stitch.

The title of this quilt is "Braedyn's Flowers".  It was made for a friend's baby daughter. The friend is the friend of one of our son's and DIL.  This friend is like another daughter or DIL to us.  So Braedyn, her daughter,  is kind of like having another granddaughter.

The reason I did the entire quilt using appliques is partly because I live in an RV and with our moving from point to point, sometimes every few days, and spending entire days or weeks hiking, biking and kayaking, there is not a lot of opportunity, whether in time or space, for setting up a sewing machine. 

Hand stitching is easier to do in stops and starts which is what living in an RV full time entails for anything electrical or demanding space and time.  But with hand stitching, I can work a few minutes or an hour or two in the early morn when I wake up before my husband (he always sleeps later than I do), and I can do it when riding in the cab of the truck going from place to place if the highways are not too bumpy.  It takes me less than 30 seconds to fold up and put away whatever I am working on with hand stitching.  I keep a bag with all my supplies handy. It is portable.

Another reason for the applique quilt is that I like to draw and I like to do  my own designs - I've learned in reading about different types of quilting that people who like to draw, to do their own designs, are naturally attracted to applique quilting - that is, if they happen to get into quilting in the first place. 

I just don't like using kits anyway, though I appreciate that they could be good tools for learning techniques.  But then, I can learn techniques in other ways besides kits.  Anyone who is comfortable with technology and can access YouTube can learn techniques.  Or anyone who has friends who quilt can learn techniques.  Or anyone who likes perusing used bookstores or the bookshelves of thrift stores can find tons of used quilting books that are full of techniques.  Or, anyone willing to make mistakes while they learn can just dive in and learn by doing. I am doing all of those.  All but buying the kits, that is. 

Here is the back of "Braedyn's Flowers". As you can see, there is a bit of puckering.  I keep trying to eliminate that.  In this effort, I tried basting the three layers of this quilt together by hand-basting with a needle and thread starting in the center and going to each corner, then starting in the center and going straight out from end to end parallel to the edges - in other words, doing a checkerboard pattern of long basting stitches. So this time, I abandoned the basting-size safety pins which I'd done in the past. 

I also taped this quilt to a freshly washed floor in the RV (since it was a baby-size quilt) in order to try to eliminate the puckers on the backing which have plagued me in the past.  If I'd continued to hand quilt, I think I could have eliminated more puckers because when I smoothed over the puckers with my hand, they lie flat, they don't fold over the stitching in the direction that I am brushing the fabric.  But when holding the quilt up for the photo, they puff out.  I didn't realize there was even a bit of puckering going on until I'd finished.  My mind was already set that I was done.  So done it is, rather than pulling the needle and thread back out and going at the quilt again for a few more hours. 

I know that with hand quilting, in the olden days, ladies did stippling, which is the name for doing quilting lines that are sometimes a quarter inch apart.  That certainly would have eliminated any puckers on this quilt.  But done is done in this case.  Time to move on. 

Here are some of the designs I quilted in the spaces that were larger than fist size around the applique flowers.  For those of you not familiar with quilting, the rule of thumb is that there shouldn't be any fabric spaces larger than a woman's fist that are not quilted, and the term quilting actually means sewing through all three layers: the front or top of the quilt, the batting or stuffing in the center that gives it the puff), and the backing fabric.  A traditional quilt is a sandwich.

So there you have it.  My.....18th quilt in two years.  Next two, I think, will be baby quilts done using a rag quilt style, which is all machine, usually, and doesn't take that long. We'll see.  I want to break out of the usually rag quilting style and try some new techniques that I've seen in a quilting book.  For each quilt I do, I want to try something new and different.  The same ol' same ol' won't cut it.