Scrappy Baby Quilt

I love it when people other than me give birth! This quilt was made for my new grandniece from some of my favorite scraps and home-made precuts. (When I have time, I like to cut my juvenile fabrics into 4" or 12" squares. This one used the 12 inchers.) 

The highlight is a fat-quarter with a hallucinogenic underwater scene, reminiscent of the Disneyland submarine ride. It's spent years in my stash, awaiting the right baby.

I also used 10" squares of some of my favorite kid prints. The squares down the left side have a Japanese theme: Frog fabric made in Japan, an elephant fabric that I bought in Japan, and a quilters' cotton with Japanese animal motifs. 

There are also adorable dogs, cats, and Hawaiian-shirt-clad jungle animals....

....rainbow dolphins, Scooby Doo and Hello Kitty, 

A colorful bubbly fabric runs along the bottom and top. I think every fabric in this quilt is a gem and I hope the baby (and her parents) have as much fun looking at it as I had making it!

Switch & Stitch Improvisational Stuffed Fish

Stuffed fish, high in fiber, yum! Here are a couple of whoppers (11" x 5"), made from blue jeans, though you can use any fabric. They serve as pillows and/or toys. This fun and forgiving method makes two at the same time, stacking and switching pieces. It can also be used to create four applique fish, if you're making an underwater quilt! My pair: Fish 1, 

And Fish 2,

With minimal embellishment, they exude serenity. One has a coconut shell button eye. 

Its partner started out with two vintage mother-of-pearl button eyes, and decorative stitching on the seams.

Later, I added buttons and brooches, to turn it into a sensory and memory toy for my elderly aunt. (Details here). 

Ready to make your own? You'll need (at least) two pairs of old jeans. Chose two values - one noticeably darker than the other. Turn the jeans inside out.

Draw a fish on a large piece of paper (packing paper, newspaper, anything). My shape started at 15" long by 7" high. (It wound up a few inches smaller, due to the piecing.) Make the body plump, because cutting is going to narrow it. 

Turn one of your jeans pairs wrong side out. Smooth one leg,  and put a few pins in the center to hold the two layers together. Place your paper pattern on top and trace all the way around it. (I used an air erasable marker). 

Cut about a half inch out from your drawn line, all the way around. 

Cut out, it looks something like this.

(Ignore the first draft of a smaller fish inside, sorry about that).

Use the paper pattern, or one side of the fish, as a pattern to trace and cut two more pieces from the second pair of inside-out jeans.  

Now you've got two pairs, one lighter and one darker, with wrong sides out. 

 Cut each in half the long way.  

Lay all the pieces right side up, so you can see them. Swap pieces so each side has contrasting pieces.

Sew each side together along the horizontal seam. Option: Leave about 3" unstitched in the middle of one seam, if you want to insert a fin in there. Press seam open.  

Mark off the heads about 3" from the tip of the snout. (Do fish have snouts?)

 Cut it off. 

Surprise - we're not going to swap the heads (unless you want to!). We're going to turn them into fins! 

But first, borrow one to serve as a pattern for new, single color heads: Place the head on a different shade of denim (consider using different jeans; the reverse side of a pair of jeans; or the back fabric from inside one of the pockets - it's often much darker than the outer fabric.). Trace and cut out. Repeat. 

 Sew the new heads onto each fish. 

If you won't be adding a fin to the center seam, now is a good time to add decorative stitching. 

Below are the four former heads. We could turn them into two fins if we sew them to each other - but to reduce bulk, I sewed each to an unseamed piece of denim.

Here you see two of the fins, pinned to denim in a different shade than the fish bodies. (I used the same shade as the head).

Sew the curved edge, leaving straight the bottom edge unsewn. Turn right side out. 

 Option: stuff lightly. 

The photo above - that's too much stuffing. I took some out.  A little goes a long way. Option: Quilt the fin, by hand or machine:

If you left a gap in the central seam, insert the end of a fin in there, and sew in position, closing the gap. 

Now place the fins along the top and/or bottom. Pin and/or baste in position.

If you want a top fin as well as a central fin, you're going to have to stack them a bit, like this. 

Place another half of the fish on top, right sides together, and pin all the way around. You will probably need to do a little trimming and redrawing of the overall shape to get the sides to line up (because of the piecing.)

Stitch all the way around, 1/2" in, more or less on your drawn line, sealing in the fins. Leave a 2-3" gap. My gap is along the lower left part of the body, before the tail curve starts. Trim seams down to 1/4", except at the gap - leave it longer there. Clip inward curves almost to the seams, especially the curves between the tail and body, and on back of the tail.

 Turn good side out. 

Ta daa! Stuff 'em, hand sew the gap, and have fun embellishing!

Stuffed, Embellished Creatures from Denim Jeans for Sensory Stimulation!

My beautiful, artistic, Aunt Ruthie is 94, and although her mind is  sharp, she's both visually and hearing-impaired, and has severe arthritis in her hands. Last month, we flew to Arizona to visit her and her daughter, my cousin Nina. By accident, I brought her the perfect gift, which she's holding here: 

What the heck is that? Why, it's a hairy, sensory stimulation, two-humped camel, of course! 

The "hair" is 6-strand embroidery floss. Thread it through a large-eyed needle, tie a knot about two inches from the end, bury the needle, bring it out 1/2" away, and pull the knot against the surface. Tie another knot right at the surface where it emerges, and cut the thread two inches from the knot. Repeat, then trim, until you've got enough hair to hint at this: 

Photo credit: J. Patrick Fischer [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Ruthie immediately loved the hirsute critter (By the way, I learned that two-humped camels are "Bactrian"). Later, Nina told me Ruthie is using it for hand strength exercises! This could be the most successful gift of my life! 

But, you may be asking, how did I happen to have a sensory stimulation camel lying around my house? 

The truth is, I have a whole bunch of newly-made stuffed animals, all made from old, clean blue jeans. Over the past months, I've been working on a complicated quilt, and needed to relax in the evening. I got hooked on "Madame Secretary" on Netflix, but still had my own sensory stimulation deficit - I wanted to make something that would require less concentration than my intensive-care quilt. So I started stitching denim animals, improvising the patterns, and cutting the pieces from my husband's old jeans' legs.  Like these elephants. (Embroidered details mean they can serve as baby gifts, without buttons, beads, or eyes that pose a choking hazard.) 

A seal/platypus: 

....which I liked so much that I made a seal team.

Ruthie's Bactrian  was the second of a series of three. Here it is with a friend:

...Plus a school of fish....

They're about a foot long. I think they make cool pillows. I gave one of them these vintage mother-of-pearl & metal shank buttons.

In Arizona, Nina gifted me with a bag of old family buttons.  Since my camel was such a hit, I decided to make one of the blank fish  into ANOTHER sensory toy for Ruthie - this one with interestingly-textured buttons, brooches, and other items from her buttons and my own collection (Button hoarding runs in the family): 

I decorated only one side of the fish, to make it easier to grasp. I especially loved the inexplicable "SILVER" pin  from Ruthie's bag. I hope she can feel the letters!

I mailed this whopper back to Arizona, and Nina sent me this  reward! 

So, in conclusion....if you know someone who might need hand exercise or stimulation*...and/or if YOU need hand stimulation while bingeing Netflix.....consider making simple stuffed animals and going to town embellishing them! These creatures were great therapy for me! 

UPDATE: A tutorial for making these fish is now posted on my blog, here. 

* Specifically, Nina said the button fish isn't as good as the bactrian for hand exercises - the buttons are harder to squeeze. But  the fish is more interesting to explore by touch.

Zip Up the Pyramids! Combine Triangles to Make a Purse

Last week, I showed off a triangular bipyramid ornament, made from a wildly freemotion-quilted, felt-backed scrap. Here's another triangular bipyramid - but it's more of a wristlet/purse than an ornament. The 6 triangles were joined into 3 diamonds; there's a zipper on top; a bangle bracelet; and it was constructed using the stiff interfacing and English Paper Piecing techniques described in too-loving detail in my new polyhedron book. 

This specific project is not in the book, so below, I'll show how I made it. First, I cut the skirt off this vintage baby (or doll?) dress, opened it and pressed it flat. (I forgot to take a picture while it was intact, so here's the top.)

I welded six equilateral triangle templates (from my book's icosahedron pattern) into three diamonds. I cut those from fusible interfacing, and covered them, front and back, with fabric. For the inside fabric, I used a new print that looks like jellyfish - the color went perfectly with the blue on the outside:

Sew three panels together as shown below. Cover one end of a 6" zipper with a tab. Sew the zipper along one long edge of a diamond. (You could do this sewing by machine, but I did it by hand for consistency with the next seam.) It's much easier to sew if the zipper is open.

To attach the zipper to the opposite side, it quickly becomes obvious that you must open it to sew. 

 Here's the zipper and tab in position, with the bag upside down.  

Sew up the remaining edges.

Add a button and, if you like, a bangle (this one is part of a set from Target that cost bupkes.) I was a little indecisive about the button - I loved the vintage leather button in the photo on top of this page, but I also loved the yellow button below. You can sew on the button and bangle at the same time, or separately if your giftee might prefer a zip-up case to a wristlet. 

For more information about my polyhedron-sewing book, see this page, or more examples on this page!