Take the Leap with Tonya!

Thank you so much to Tonya for taking one of my comments to heart, and taking me (and anyone who wishes to join in) under her wing. I just adore Tonya's free form quilts, and I have wanted for the longest time to attempt one but as I commented, 'I'm scared to take the leap'. I'm like so many other quilters out there, who've been taught that it's a bad thing when lines aren't perfectly parallell and your points don't meet or get chopped off. It just looks so free and fun to me, but because of my points police training, I didn't know where to begin!

Tonya has offered to guide us through the process of making a baby quilt which is to be donated to the charity of our choice. I'm so in, and so excited! Isn't this cyberspace thing wonderful, it's not that long ago that I wouldn't have dreamed this kind of fun was possible!

Now for a little 'eye candy'. This quilt is called Amy's daisies, because most of the top was made last year by my daughter. She's 11 now, so she must have been 10 when she made it up. One school holidays we were looking for a project to keep her busy, so we went to a couple of quilt stores and selected some fabrics. The pinks and purples are her favourite colours. She's made a nine patch quilt before, so they're not hard at all, but this was the first time she'd played with fusible applique. She even did a great effort with the machined blanket stitch! Because of her efforts, Amy has been made a junior member of my local quilt group!

After the school holidays were finished, I offered to quilt the top for her, as she's a little nervous about doing that herself. I free-motioned the peacock feather design, and then gave the flowers some dimension with some lines to look like stamens and creases in the petals. After it was finished, I thought it would be fun to do a little beading around the centres of the flowers. Amy used to do ballet quite seriously, and as a result of that I've accumulated a million sequins and beads, so hey, why not use them up!

These school holidays Amy has a project she'd like to work on, it's an underwater scene made up with fusible applique. It's not huge, but it has coral and clown fish that look like Nemo. She's going to bring it to quilt group next week. I'm really looking forward to it!