Quilt Feature: Hopscotch

{Edited, because I changed my mind...again...sigh. My official entry for the Blogger Quilt Festival is Drunk Zebra after all. I wish I hadn't changed it. Now I'm much further down the quickly growing list of wonderful quilts.}

This is Katy's Hopscotch Quilt. This quilt was made for my oldest daughter's 4th birthday. A lot of love went into it, and though it is impossible to tell from this first photo, a lot of detail.
It was a very improvisational quilt. I knew what I wanted the hopscotch part to look like, but assumed I'd end up with a throw quilt.
I hand appliqued the numbers using my favorite freezer paper method, and then pieced borders for each square. It was very long and skinny at that point so I added width with more white fabric, but it was so empty and white. Thanks to the suggestion of some fellow quilting friends, that baren wasteland was resolved with "doodles"!

A long with a lot of raw edge applique (in which I made up my own technique - using perle cotton and doing a running/quilting stitch to stitch down the appliques), I did a lot of hand quilting with perle cotton to look like chalk doodles surrounding the hopscotch.

I doodled a house, just like I've been drawing them since elementary school.

I used stenciles for things like flowers and stars. My wonderful husband, who is a little more talented with a pencil than I, helped out by doodling a butterfly and a bee.

My favorite doodle is our stick figure family. Here are some more doodles, you can see these photos better on Flickr. They are really striking in person, but stinkin' hard to photograph!

 Prior to the doodle appliques and hand quilting, I machine quilted the entire quilt, using a walking fit on my domestic machine, with a random grid, giving the quilt a beautiful texture.

The appliques include stars, hearts and flowers, as well as a sun, and Katy's 4 year old sized hands. 

The finishing touch was a personalized label.

I used Oliver + S Modern Workshop fabric, which is wonderful for a not very girly-girl, her favorite color is blue. I backed it with a blue flannel from Moda, which makes it oh so cozy.
Katy loves her quilt, and regularly plays hopscotch on her bed, though sometimes we pull it down to the family room for some fun.

Happy 4th of July! (and an awesome finish)

First off Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans. We love the 4th of July around here, all the patriotism and red white and blue and fireworks.
But 4 years ago our first child came into the world with a bang on the 4th of July (unexpected, she wasn't due for another month), and she's been keeping us on our toes ever since. Also, she thinks the fireworks are all for her, though we are trying to explain Independence Day to her as well.
This is just a quick phone pic, but I wanted to share what I've been slaving away at for her for the past few weeks, really cutting it close finishing up the last bit of hand quilting (hard to see in the photo but there are doodles done in perle cotton) late last night.

More pictures to come soon.