Monday, 26 January 2009

Rosie's Cuckoo Clock

Same theme, different kid, different quilt. This quilt was inspired by the same Time and Space theme but with a very different result. Rosie was 8 years old when she made this quilt and Rosie was and still is interested in design technology. She likes to make things out of Lego and K'nex and old cardboard boxes and toilet paper tubes. So she wanted her quilt to have some 3D elements.


This took some trial and error to figure out. We ended up using a chunky wooden coat hanger to 'hang' the clock. Rosie designed a cuckoo out of yellow fleece and hand stitched and stuffed it. Then she cut a door through the quilt top so the cuckoo could pop out. For the weights, Rosie hand stitched, stuffed and embellished a rocket out of pink fleece. Rosie cut the hands of the clock out of special craft foam and hand tacked them to the face.

We thought that the log cabin block could be used to good effect to make the clock face. I rotary cut the strips and Rosie pieced the 4 log cabin blocks to make the clock face. This was her first solo machine piecing project and she made a good job of it. Later she added borders out of a darker space fabric that blended with the fabric she'd used in the blocks.
The wall hanging was backed in pink fleece, with a triangular pocket at the top to fit over the hanger. This quilt was also hand quilted by Rosie using glow in the dark pink thread. This was her first effort at hand quilting and she took care to make straight and even stitches. Finally, Rosie went on to embellish the quilt with buttons, beads and star sequins and also the special heat gun dots. I added the binding.

Rosie was really pleased with how this project turned out. I liked the way that Rosie used her talents in design technology to think up and construct a unique little quilt that truly exemplified the Time and Space theme. It hangs now in the upstairs hallway and it brings a smile to my face every time I walk by. If you click the photo at the beginning of this post you should be able to see the quilt in much greater detail.

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