Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Mustache Quilt

Thank you to everyone for your lovely comments on my kids' Christmas quilts! As promised, here are some more details! For today's post, I'll focus on the mustache quilt:

My twelve year old daughter has been obsessed with mustaches this year, so I thought it would be fun to make her a quilt. I had planned to make my kids quilts as presents in 2011, but ran out of time, so I was determined to make it work in 2012! I originally purchased this pattern, which was really cute. However, when I actually sat down to work on it (December 23rd!) I couldn't decide what fabrics to use. I really wanted to use my daughter's favorite color combo of blue and orange, but it didn't seem to gel with the pattern. So, I went to the web for inspiration and found this tutorial by I'm A Ginger Monkey. I really loved the simplicity of the design, and the look of the mustaches in bright colors and bold prints. Since I was running low on time, and because I had some dark grey minky fabric for the backing that I wanted to tie in, I decided to appliqué the mustaches on a charcoal Kona cotton solid, and add in alternate fabric squares.

I started with some Anna Maria Horner Innocent Crush fabrics that I had been hoarding saving for something special. I dug through all of my fabric collections for additional blue and orange fabrics, adding in some Joel Dewberry (Heirloom), some Denyse Schmidt (Flea Market Fancy), and other Anna Maria Horner fabrics (Field Study and Loulouthi).

I was able to trace, cut and fuse all of the mustaches in the morning, and then I did a LOT of blanket stitch appliqué after my daughter went to bed that night. (The blocks were cut at 10 inches square, and the blocks were set in a 6 x 7 grid). By midnight, the top was put together.

I was able to do the quilting the next day on my Viking Mega Quilter (my daughter was banned from the sewing room!). I decided to be brave and use orange thread, which actually turned out to be a nice blend with both the prints and the grey. I also decided to quilt right through the mustaches, and I'm very happy with the overall look.

I used minky on the back, but I did include Warm and Natural batting, too. I wanted the quilt to be super warm and cuddly.



The recipient was very happy. She knew a quilt was in the works, but she was very surprised by the mustaches and favorite colors!

I'll blog about my son's quilt later this week!

 

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1 comment:

  1. I don't know what it is about young girls and mustaches, but my 9 year old is obsessed with them, too. (That and colored duct tape --- she even has duct tape with mustaches on it... what will they think of next???) Anyway, I saw you post about this quilt last week (and the one for your son) and I'm happy to see another post about this quilt. I am definitely going to make one of these for my daughter, hopefully for Valentine's Day. I will probably follow your idea of putting mustaches only on the solid squares (to save time), but we'll see how it goes once I choose some fabrics from my stash (or should I say "stache" ;-). Thanks for sharing this!

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