WIP Wednesday - Picnic Pals Quilt

During the holiday weekend, I started thinking about putting these embroidered blocks together with some fabric from the same designer, Alyssa Thomas from Penguin &Fish.  

Last Spring, Alyssa offered some of her fabric and a copy of her new book in exchange for making samples for her Quilt Market booth.  Besides the fabric and the book, I also got ten of her alphabet animals designs to make the samples from and to keep for myself afterwards. 

They are very cute and quick to stitch up, so I stamped some squares for a travel project and finished up a set for me, earlier this month. 

The fabric I selected is her Picnic Pals line and she sent me fat quarters of all 18 prints as well as eight coordinating solids. They are all organic and really nice to work with!

(this block is not wonky, just my photography skills...)

I am trying to decide whether to make a couple of duplicates so I can make a bigger quilt, or maybe make some 'alternate' blocks.  

I think I will make a few more blocks and then decide...

Catching Up The Week

I having been stitching away, this week, on the samples for Penguin and Fish.  I am half way through number 7 (a super cute giraffe) and then I will just have the monkey left. I hope to get them in the mail by Monday.  The designs are simple, but with the sweetest details that really make them sing!  I am having a lot of fun working on them, albeit with a bit of pressure to do my very best work.  (I will admit to taking stitches out to re-do them when I might have said "good enough" if I were stitching for my own project!)

This is the cutest little hedgie!

Before I received the sample materials, I did finish up two more quilts for donation to the birthday program. 

The nursery pastel scrappy trip-a-long:

The snow is all gone, after today's rain!

I am using up some puffy poly batting that I got at an estate sale some months back. It is quite different from low loft cotton batting.  A little challenging, but it does show off the quilting really well!   I did an orange peel design since I had a built-in grid in the squares. (You have to look closely to see that I changed direction a time or two.  The high loft camouflages errors nicely!)   I used the same stripe as the binding for the backing and it ended up about 36" x 48".

This is number two, this week.

When Ms A was little she had some tiny Kitty Cucumber paper dolls. They were so small they fit into a little matchbox!   

I came across these coordinating KC fabrics at a Goodwill last summer. I outlined the blocks with quilting and stitched around the motifs in the focus blocks and around the smaller kitties in the alternating block, along with some "bubbles" around the tossed flowers.    I did not use a different bobbin thread to coordinate with the dark blue backing. I don't mind that the quilting shows, but I wish the binding stitches were tidier.  Having a binding that is an equal width on both the front and the back is still an area of opportunity for improvement for me.  

This one ended up about 40" square.

I hope wherever these little quilts end up, they will keep a little one cozy!

Stitching for Stuff!

It's been a challenge to get back in the groove this week!  There has been a lot of TV watching and embroidery to pass the time between snow shoveling intervals (it is snowing again, as I am writing) 

And there is going to be more embroidery, because my application to be a sample stitcher for Penguin and Fish was accepted!  I got the newsletter with the call for applicants Monday afternoon, and fired off an email that said "pick me! pick me!" and they did!

I think their designs are very cute and I can't wait to see what they will send me to stitch up. In exchange for stitching samples, they have offered fat quarters of their organic fabric and/or a signed copy of "Sew and Stitch Embroidery" by Alyssa Thomas, the creative force behind Penguin and Fish. The  book  will be coming out in May and will include transfers!  

I love transfers!  When I want to embroider, I don't want to have to draw it out first. I just want to pick some colors and dig in, so transfers are always my first choice. I think an alphabet quilt stitched with P & F designs would be super cute!

If you would like to be considered for stitching samples down the road, let me know and I will forward the newsletter to you, or you can sign up at Alyssa's blog to receive it directly, and get a free pattern!