Alien Landscape 2012

Today I am entering my “Alien Landscape 2012” mini-quilt into the Modern Mini Challenge going on over at Ellison Lane Quilts.  I have spent the past 5 weeks working on this mini-quilt, and it is finally finished (and my kiddos are super excited that they can finally play with it!)

Alien Landscape 2012 was an idea I had after working on a quiet book for my children.  After watching Spunky (my 5 year old boy) play (at full-volume) with the book I realized that I would either need to rename it, or make something different for him.  Then I read about this challenge on Ellison Lane’s blog and decided this would be the perfect opportunity to try something new (and challenge myself!)

My goal for the mini was to have a functional playscape that would be fun to play with but also be bold and interesting as a wall hanging.  So flat aliens that fit into pockets was the way to go!

This space car has a license plate - Google Translate didn't have any alien dialects, so I used Russian instead.  It says “Hebrews 11:3”, which says “By faith we understand that the universe was created by God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”  That includes aliens, right?!!

Here you can see the house.  It is also a pocket, ready for aliens to come and go as they wish.  I wanted to make all of the lines in the mini a bit wonky, thinking that their gravity probably wouldn't be the same as ours.  (Side note: I had a bunch of fun playing with new embroidery stitches – I especially like that trellis!)

 This is “Salien” (short for Sunburst Alien). Spunky thought that this one was too fat to fit in the space ship, so he said we should make a "skinnier" one.  Funny thing is that now that I've made that change, he still wants to use this one.  What can I say – he’s 5!

Here is the back of the quilt – can you see the quilting?  It’s what Spunky asked me for – a spirally dotted line through the universe.  This is the ONLY stitching that I did through the entire quilt.  All of the other stitching was done after it was quilted – I added all of the appliques, pockets and other elements by hand on the front side.

Oh, by the way, I guess I didn't mention yet that the space ship actually unbuttons from the front so you can send the little aliens on adventures throughout the galaxies on the back!  And yet another moment of truth – this is the first spaceship I made.  I wasn't completely happy with it, so I made another one.  But when I showed it to Spunky, he had already made his mind up that he liked this one – something about the colors, trims, french knots… I don’t know, but again my first draft is now the “final” – kids just don’t care about perfection. They want “real”!

Here’s a closeup of the binding.  Its my first time doing mitered corners, and I was going to put in a slick rod pocket , but again, on the “get real” meter, that was a dud .  This is for a young child.  He needs to be able to hang it – preferably by himself!  So big loops fit the bill.  I’m actually quite impressed with the binding – the mitered corners look excellent, and all of the stitching is invisible (I did it all by hand – if I did it by machine it’d look terrible – I don’t do straight lines very well!).

Here’s the trio: Cyclopalien, Peanut Alien, and Salien the Skinny.  These guys look pretty inviting, right? "Come play with us!!!" (More pictures of this project are at my Flickr photostream.)

Here’s a closeup of the wonky water tower-satelite dish-house. This project took five weeks for a reason.  All of my embroidery and other details were done by hand.  I’m not saying that to toot my own horn, folks, I like to do hand stitching, I just wanted to show you the details.  It’s such a great thing to have something to give to a child.  My children are going to know that mommy made this, by hand, with tons of love and it is totally unique.  Maybe I should sign it.  Hmmm.  That’s probably not a bad idea…

The aliens were all made with wool felt, so they’re super soft, but they have a layer of Peltex inside, so they are stiff-ish (like spongy cardboard).  The alien designs, above, were made on a recycled t-shirt with fabric pen.  I like that they’re all unique, and all of them have some simple embroidery stitches.  (I’m teaching Spunky some basic embroidery, so I guess I could call this an “educational” mini-quilt – think that’s a stretch?  *ha!*).

Ta- Da!  All ready for play!  

:) Caren

PS – want more details?  They’re below.  If you get bored with such info, you can stop reading right here - have a great day!

DETAILS

Name:  Alien Landscape 2012 by cadamsCREATIONS

Finished Size: approximately 24”x 24”

Quilting: Spiral pattern done by hand with DMC embroidery floss (3 strands).

Batting: Warm & Natural Quilt Batting

Background Piecing: Crazy quilt style, done by machine.

Appliques: Big house (pocket), space car (pocket), two wonky houses.

Extras: Space ship made from quilting cottons and Peltex with ric rac and embroidered details.  Aliens made of wool felt, recycled t-shirt, and Peltex – hand drawn and embroidered.

Quilt Back: quilting cotton, one continuous piece (galaxies theme).

Binding: 7/8” pre-made double-fold quilt binding, sewn by hand.  Hanging loops made from tiny double fold bias tape in orange.

Wanted to share my top five "NEW" things I did during this project:

1. I researched color theories.  I am not a quilter, and choosing the colors was actually the hardest part of my design process.  Learned a BUNCH, though!

Sprout (12 months old) was intrigued by the fabric.

2. I researched "crazy quilting".  I knew I wanted the background fabric to be "haphazard", so I heard about crazy quilting and decided that I could give it a shot.  My kids loved the background fabric!

3. I researched binding and mitered corners.  When I began this project, I was clueless as to how folks got those pretty, sharp corners.  But now that I've done 8 of them I feel like I have a good handle on them!

4. I used Peltex for the first time!  It's really fun stuff, and easy to sew through.

5. I scoured my embroidery books for new stitches to learn.  I ended up doing too many to describe here, but it was a great learning experience.

A Note to Jennifer:

I appreciate your work on putting this challenge together, and for answering my many questions about it!  I feel like I learned so much during this past 5 weeks - it's been like an online class experience, but since I don't like school, I'll add that it was FUN FUN FUN!!!  So from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!!!  

:) Caren

Chair Name Tag Thingies

(honestly - I have GOT to find a better name for these things!)

Hallelujah!  My chair name-tag thingies are finished!  (Remember this post?) They are basically like pillowcases that go over the back of my sisters dining chairs.  I finally finished all 12 of them.  Mom, Dad, seven children, and three guests are all going to have their own unique chairs!  

My brother-in-law ("DAD") is not as conservative as my husband, but still, I'm hoping he doesn't look at these and get dizzy.  Or shield his eyes and run away.  That's some crazy fabric, huh?

Rosalie, on the other hand, will really like them.  I'm hoping they all will.  I mean, that's 6 months of work so - yeah, I'd like them to be appreciated.  But then again, they're kids (*sigh*).

I didn't want to put individual pictures of all of them, that would make this post really long, and honestly, I didn't think anyone (other than myself) would want to see each of them.  So here's my collage.  Fun, huh?

All of my letters are hand-cut and appliquéd in some fashion.  I stitched around the edges of all of the letters as well as all of the shapes, including the critters so that nothing would come off without some effort.  And they're all made with some amount of reverse-applique.  And vinyl.  And love - lots of it!

So now they're in the mail.  I'm praying that they are big enough (I never got an exact measurement on the chair backs).  If they're not big enough, I'm practicing my speech to my sister: "Look on the bright side - you can always stuff them, then everyone will have their own little pillow!"  (Who knows - maybe God will stretch them in transit?!!)

:) Caren

Will this project EVER get finished?!!!

Do you have projects like that?  I usually tell people to start small so they don't get overwhelmed and quit before completion.  On this project, however, I did not take my own advice.

So what is the project?  Well, this is a little in-process photo I took.  It is the applique for a chair cover.  Not just any chair cover, though.  See my sister has seven kids.  And she asked me a while back if I could make something that gave each chair a name (assumedly so there were not so many squabbles over who sits where).

She has 12 dining chairs total, and if my math is correct, that's 9 family members plus 3 guests.  So I'm putting names on 9 and the other 3 will be different creatures.  (A frog, a cat, and a lizard - they live in Florida).  A while ago I scored some discounted vinyl at the Joann's in town.  Since most of the family is under 15, I wanted to make sure these were fully machine-washable and would stand up to a lot of abuse.

So I made most of the names out of vinyl with reverse-appliqued letters.  Praise God they turned out pretty good!  That was a LOT of work.  See, here's how it went.

First, I printed out the names.  Then traced them onto Freezer Paper (I love that stuff!).  Then I ironed the freezer paper right to the front of the vinyl. Beneath the vinyl is a fabric (fabrics for all of the names were different).  Took it to the sewing machine and stitched around each letter (like I said - a TON of work - most of it was hand-cranked instead of using the pedal).  Then for the fun part!

I took my itty bitty embroidery scissors and cut out the inside of each letter, to reveal that fantastic fabric underneath!  See how the vinyl makes those letters POP?!!!  Super coolness!!!

My sister is in town right now on vacation, and this was supposed to be her Christmas gift, but as you can see, it's not finished.  So I took her to dinner last night (thanks to husbands who took care of the kids!) and showed her first the fabrics, then each of the name/creature plates.  She was astonished.  Loved them.

So now, I just have to add the plates to the fabrics, make all 12 into pillowcase-style chair coverings, and hem.  No biggie, right, now that the hard part is over.  Should take me a bit less than the 6 months I've already been working on this project.  No problem - what are sisters for!
:) Caren