Sunday, July 15, 2012

Alice's Daydream Quilt--Grandkids' Daydreams



I’ve spent so much time with our four grandchildren this summer that I decided to focus on their daydreams.  Our granddaughter is 11, nearly 12, and her life right now revolves around her friends.  The little boys are all three totally focused on sports!  The two Michigan boys (nearly 11 and 8) played both Little League and were on select, “travel” teams, and so their daydreams center on baseball.  The California grandson (nearly 9) is an expert swimmer and on his local swim team.  He was in the relay finals, and his team won all three of their relays, and so I have him daydreaming about that event.

I have a huge stash of commercial quilting fabric with “juvenile” themes, and so I was delighted to find baseball players, young girls having fun together, and swimming boys and girls.  I made extensive use of Wonder Under fusible for this quilt, fusing this product to the backs of all the fabrics just mentioned, plus browns for the boys’ hair, some gold swirly fabric for Lia’s pony tail, and then various colors of fabric for their shirts.  I decided to use a piece of a discarded crazy quilt project for the daydream “thought bubbles.”  I wanted them to have some dimension, and since this project was stitched onto batting already, it worked well.  I cut the bubbles leading up to the thought bubbles from a multi-colored polka dot fabric.

I used some previously painted sky fabric for the background, which I machine quilted.  The larger appliqués were first fused to the background and then were machine appliquéd down with a tiny zig-zag stitch.  (I simply fused the simpler, smaller shapes down with the Wonder Under.)  I backed the quilt with the swimming-children fabric, and I used the sky fabric for the binding.

11 comments:

  1. Alice,
    What a wonderful quilt! You did such a cute job on this quilt. Love the composition, texture of the hair, and colors of the bubbles to their daydreams. How great to have those juvenile fabrics in your stash to use. Thanks for sharing their daydreams with us!

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  2. Alice, I really like the way you found and used fabrics to their best advantage in this quilt and thank you for sharing your grand kids dreams with us.

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  3. I love the repeats of the round heads with the bubbles and the dots....good job! You pulled the 4 grandchildren into the same composition with just the right fabrics you had on hand...unification, repetition. Brava!

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  4. This is absolutely adorable Alice! Love the simplicity and your good fortune to have the perfect fabrics in your stash. :) Your design and the fabrics convey this daydream theme 4X over. You are very clever.

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  5. Oh Alice - What a beautiful job you did on this very special quilt. You managed to bring all four of your wonderful grandchildren together as they share and dream about activities that bring them great joy and give them a sense of accomplishment. I love your fabric choices, the innovative techniques you used and that you brought all these children and their special dreams together in one place ! Love ya, Kath

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  6. Alice, I love your idea and the way you carried it out. ss

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  7. Alice, this is a lovely little quilt. I can see all the grandkids fighting over it. What a wonderful way to depict each of their interests!

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  8. I like the variety of fabric choices you implemented to make this work. The rear perspective of their heads is different and works so well to showcase their dreams as the central focus. Will you have to make 3 more so than can all have one of their own??!! Adorable!

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  9. Alice, what a sweet, whimsical quilt & great use for some of the juvenile fabrics in your collection. Brilliant to have portrayed your grandchildren from the back...thought bubbles with their daydreams are perfect!

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  10. My dear Alice, This is wonderful. The love that obviously went into this piece is so evident. Do you have plans to make three more? What a wonderful remembrance gift they would make to precious grandchildren.

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  11. I love the daydreams and the layout. The little swimmer is especially cute. You use so many different techniques so well.

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