Tuesday, February 5, 2013

hey, jude...

I don't sew.

Well, not in the conventional sense anyway.  I have absolutely no idea how to read and follow a pattern.  I started dabbling with quilts a few years back and if I can't make it up in my own head, I pretty much can't do it.

My beautiful niece just had her first baby...a sweet little boy!  Her handsome hubster is a Buffalo Bills fan, so upon learning my new grandnephew's name, I got straight to work on his quilt.  (Is it grandnephew or great nephew??)

Either way, it makes me old.

I will not presume to call this a tutorial, since I'm a self-taught, complete amateur.  But, this is my first quilt where I've taken pictures along the way.

Here's little Jude's Tatanka.....er...Buffalo.


  

By some random miracle, an idea pops into my head...then I do a rough sketch and work out my measurements. 

I found a Buffalo Bills image and tried to match their font as closely as possible (Playbill).

I blew everything up to the size I wanted and then printed off.



Then I cut out my images.


One of my favorite quilting tools is Heat-n-Bond Lite.  You iron this on to the back of the fabric you're cutting, then after it's cut, you peel off the backing, and you can iron it on to the fabric you're going to applique it to.




Heat-n-bond ironed on...




Tracing hey JUDE...


  

Letters are cut out. 



The backing is peeled off.  (Ha! I'm wearing that same shirt as I type this!  Weird...)


 

Then ironed on to white fabric.



After pressing, I did the same process with the Heat-n-Bond. (Yes, I'm embarrassed to say I have a CHEAP pink iron.)  I cut the letters (again) out of the white fabric so they would have 2 layers of color before ironing on to the quilt.

Here I'm cutting out and assembling our little Tatanka.



I followed the same steps to get Mr. Buffalo assembled, then ironed him on to the quilt, along with Sir Jude.


After I finished mounting the buffalo (so to speak), I did some zig-zag (or satin) stitching around all the edges. 

There were lots of edges.






Then I used a cool new spray product (well, new to me) called 505 Spray And Fix.  I sprayed this on to the back of the quilt (call it my peanut butter), then smooshed the back on and made my sandwich.  This held the front and back together rather than pinning everything in place.  The "quilting" went SO much better than with pins.  I'm sold! I didn't fill this with any batting since the back of the quilt was a thick, fuzzy, awesomely soft-for-baby fabric.




After putting front and back together, I trimmed the back to be even with the front.  Then I "quilted" the top and bottom together...basically just stitching around the buffalo, etc., so the top and bottom of the quilt would stay together.



Then I clipped on the binding:



 Then sewed on the binding:




But before the binding was complete, I added my cross-stitched signature on the back:



Once again, the finished product.

All Buffalo.  No Chip.











Can't wait to meet you Jude!! 
 
(To see some other quilts I've brained up, click here.)

I'm sharing with:
Green Willow Pond
Pieced Pastimes Saturday Sparks 

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