Hi all, this is actually an early quilt I made for my eldest for her birthday. The name of the quilt "12 Day Howling Success", came to be due to that's how long it took me to make it. I will give you a quick run down of the process...
1. I grabbed a large piece of white 100% cotton fabric, laid it out on a large enough table that it supported the entire piece of fabric.
2. Then I got some fabric painting colours (water based), a paint brush & started to play rainbows on the fabric... water helped to blur the colours into each other. I left it to dry, when I thought I had made a big enough mess.
3. I found a plain one colour print of a wolf & enlarged it by my own hand & eye co-ordination, so it was large enough to sit on top of the "sunset" coloured background.
4. I cut & pinned & stitched the wolf to the background with my free-hand embroidery machine (the "Old Girl").
5. After this was done I placed a single bed woolen blanket (that I bought at a thrift shop, second-hand & still in great condition), this was used as wadding, & I found some nice coordinating fabric for the back, blue cotton was used to border the picture of the wolf & sunset. I did a freehand running stitch in a celtic knot design all around the outside of the quilt.
6. The really hard & heavy work started when I used approximately 18 different colour threads all through the sunset background to bring it all together.... this was done with a continuing running stitch in the areas that needed whatever colour (& yes, I did have to repeat a few now & then).
7.After ALL that work had been done, I then found enough black bias binding to edge the entire quilt.
Now, all this was done 12 days prior to my daughter's birthday..... 2 days after Christmas!! I hid out in my sewing room that was a detached granny type flat, seperate from the main house, nobody was allowed to enter this area the entire time (only Husband got to see how it came together).
Here in Australia we usually have heatwave summers where fire season is very high in our area too (we were working with the Fire Service at the time (as volunteers), also getting Christmas organised too!!!
Anyway, I stayed up the eve of her birthday to finish it on time. I think, if I remember back then, it was about 5am on her birthday I had it done, wrapped up & a bow & card to finish.
Yes, it was a success all round & if she didn't like it...... I would have kept it for ourselves, but no, she loves it & it still lays over her lounge & gets used on these cold winter nights to get cozy into & watch a movie with a hot chocolate.
