Otherwise known as an apliqué nightmare in blue
I started this quilt as a commission for a baby whose parents are musicians.They play the Tuba and the Flute. Usualy I only make quilts that are quick and dirty. All consruction is done by sewing machine and with as large a squares as possible, if I can't do it in 4 hours the customers won't cough up what it's worth, but this one ran away with me, not due to being too long in it's construction but due to other jobs getting in the way.
I was totaly inspired by the musical theme but couldn't follow through with my inital ideas of making the musical notes "noisy".
I could have used celophane to make a crinkly note but my search for squeeky note was a no, no as I only had 5 days left to complete, and couldn't find any localy . I did have plenty of time at the begining, but it ran away from me at the end.
I printed out the basic patterns for the notes from Word and Clip Art which worked out fine. However I had no luck at all tracking down pictures of a Tuba and a Flute that I could print out and enlarge to make a pattern for the
apliqué. a trawl of the internet only gave me photos of people playing music and the detail of the instruments was lost when I expanded the pictures.
Finaly a brain wave and I remembered the old stand by "The Ladybird Book Of Music" Yes, finaly line drawings of instruments.
The tuba I thought would be realy nice to do and I thought it was a great shape . Not so nothing but a pain in the ......................( instert expletive of your choice) The thread bunched up and it was a three times unpick, much gnashing of teeth and muttering went on . Then I moved on to the Flute which I was dreading all thosse fiddly exta chrome attachments to try and turn into fabric!!!!!!!!! Following a moment of inspiration that saved the Tuba I decided to forgo the appliqué of tiny circles of fabric and try to draw them in thread straight onto the flute, sucess. I added the notes once I had the instruments in place.
Having done the quilt top I had a wake up call, normaly I quilt in the ditch between the squares, this one was a whole cloth apliqué. Duh, I ended up stitching around the main large shapes in biege thread to quilt the layers together.
Altogether I was pleased with the end result and I got it done in the alloted 4 hours sewing time!! Just . But I don't fancy doing another one again in the next month, ask me again after Christmas.
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