Baby Isla's Quilt

Finished:  Isla's Quilt!  

This is a double-sided quilt for my friend Alli, who is getting ready to have her first baby, a baby girl named "Isla."  Isn't that a pretty name?

 Here are the fabrics Alli picked out for her quilt.   The white background/multi colored floral print is the baby bedding.  Everything else was chosen to match.

 Here is the TOP of SideA complete - I sorta made-up this pattern, it's kind of like "turning 21" except that I switched up the pattern about 3 times.  Since the fabric was 1/2 yard cuts, I was able to get 2 blocks out of each cut.   Each block I separated into 2 piles, stacked, and cut them into various squares and rectangles.  For the remainding fabric, I cut the blocks separately, and resewed them together.

 There was only about an 1/8 yard of each of these fabrics leftover.   With this fabric I did some appliques.  I was planning on using the remainding fabric to make each letter of "ISLA" a different color.  For instance "I" would be blue, "S" would be yellow, "L" would be green, etc.,   BUT, since the fabrics were so THIN, I sewed them together and THEN traced/fused/cut the applique shapes.   I LOVED the way these turned out!!!  Whoda thunk it?!  Strip-pieced applique is born!  I don't know if this has been done before, but I will DEFINITELY be using it again..   It was born out of necessity, but I think now I'll do it on purpose just because I love the LOOK so much!

 Alli wanted a few flowers and applique shapes to go on the white side of the quilt and surrounding the name "Isla" and since I loved the look of the strip-pieced applique, I used this technique for all the flowers as well. I think it gives it a kaleidoscope look.  I think the trick is to position the pieces diagonally, or slanted a bit.
I plan to do a blog post/tutorial on just this very soon.

 Here we are quilting the quilt.  This was totally quilted except for the Ahole (The hole of the a) ;c) tee hee

 YAY finished!!

 Side B

 Side A

 For this quilt I used raw-edge, fusible applique.   With this technique you can skip a few steps and save alot of time.  FIRST you baste the quilt, THEN you fuse the applique shapes onto the quilt, THEN you stitch . . through all 3 layers of the quilt.   This gives an interesting effect to the other side of the quilt.  You can see in this photo the outline of the shapes through the patchwork.  Some people might say this is cheating, but I actually prefer this look!   I doubt it would hold up in a quilt show though ;c)

 Here's sweet little Isla's name - appliqued in the middle.

 Coming out from the name, are stems, leaves, and flowers going North, south, east, and west.

 flowers and strip-pieced applique

 Closeup of one of the letters - surrounded by stippling.