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.

Ellie's Pegasus

Ellie loves horses. So even though the theme of the Childrens Quilt competition was Time and Space, we were going to have to work a horse into it somehow. Ellie got the idea from the Greek myths of a Pegasus pulling the sun across the heavens. It was perfect.

Making Ellie a part of the planning process helped to keep her interest throughout the project. Ellie started a planning book. She kept sketches of the horse, the layout of the quilt and ideas about threads and embellishments.

We wanted to use fun fabric so Ellie went online to choose. Lots of online shops offer a design window so it was posssible to try out the fabric before we bought it. We also got exciting thread. It glows in the dark! Ellie used it for the machine quilting that radiated out from the sun and also for the hand quilting and embellishment.

Ellie sketched a small version of the horse. We enlarged it on a photocopier and used it for a pattern to cut out the image from white felt. Felt was ideal because we could leave the edges raw. Ellie was able to hand sew it to the top. Ellie used special fabric paint to draw the feathers on the wings. The slices of the sun were put together using bond-a web and later machine appliqued. I helped with the ironing and machining. All the hand work was completed by Ellie.

Embellishing was a big part of the quilt. Ellie used beads and sequins to make the stars twinkle. We also used a special heat gun that would instantly attach gems and glow in the dark dots to the top. This was fun and quick. The end result was fantastic. To see a better view of Ellie's Pegasus quilt, click on the image at the top of this post. I think you'll be able to see a larger image. You should be able to zoom in and see lots of detail.