A tale of two trees

My friend asked me to make two twin-size quilts for her daughters's room. She remembered this mini I made, and asked for quilts like that--just bigger. I used this tutorial from Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew as the basis for the mini, but making it twin-size required some figuring.


You'll have to use your imagination a little--when these are on twin-size beds, the tree will be on top of the mattress, with the white borders hanging off the sides. The top can be folded down so you can see the backing fabric.


We used a cream Moda Bella solid for the background. You can't really tell here, but the tree trunk is a fun print from Sanctuary. The leaves--all scraps and a few samples that my friend gave me. I appliquéd the leaves and did an all-over stippling (in cream).



A few process notes--this was a challenge for me, and there was definitely some making it up figuring it out as I went along. (Thanks to Elizabeth, Emily, and Angela for advice!) That's the good thing about making two--I was really able to refine my process the second time around. For the first tree, I prepared the quilt sandwich, then cut out the leaves and appliquéd them and quilted it at the same time. This led to some (expected) wrangling. I wasn't thinking I'd have room for quilting between the leaves, so I thought the appliqué would double as quilting. It ended up being more wrangling than I was interested in (and I was able to quilt between the leaves) so on #2 I appliquéd the leaves first, then basted and quilted. Much easier.

I didn't want any raw edges, so I used this appliqué method. Then I attached the leaves to the quilt using Heat N Bond Lite before stitching them down with invisible thread (as suggested by Linz!). I sewed around the perimeter of each leaf and a "vein" down the middle.


My friend chose these great Kumari Garden prints for the backing. Have you seen this line? I hadn't before this project. Love it.


Both quilts were bound using Kona Chartreuse.

Overall, I think they turned out pretty well! I'm glad to add these to my dunzo list.

(if you're wondering why I keep saying "dunzo," blame Tom Haverford. I'm not using it correctly, but I don't care, because Aziz Ansari is the funniest man on TV.)