20 Apr 2015

Kindy Quilt

When the kids at Kindy turn 5 they have a little ceremony where they make a play-doh cake and blow out some candles, and they often give the kindergarten a present. The gift is usually a book or puzzle or game. I want to do something a bit different so I had the idea to make a quilt for the home corner. I planned it out and decided to do the Waikato Kindergarten kiwi 'mascot' in the middle with pinwheels and checker board around that. I decided to get onto it now so that it isn't hanging over me at the end of the year. How organised is that!? 
Here are some of the steps as I did them:

I sewed two long strips of green and blue together, cut them into 2 ½" wide rectangles, then sewed 2 together to get the checker board effect.
For the windmill I put two 5" squares together and sewed a ¼" seam around the edge. I then cut the square into rectangles and ironed them open. This forms the pieces for the windmill (so easy!!!).
Front and back of 2 halves of a windmill piece
Windmill all sewn together
I only needed the square to be 4 ½" x 4 ½" so I used the awesome angle mark on my ruler to trim the sides down and keep it a nice square.
The kiwi all cut out and ironed down with Heat n' Bond. I wasn't happy with it's placement on the white square so here I am cutting it out to place on another square. Made it all a bit more solid anyway.
All sewn down with a very fine zigzag. I wanted to make sure that he wasn't going anywhere!
With the windmills sewn in place around the kiwi. Some of those corners were getting quite tricky to sew through with 7 layers of cotton in some places.
On the ground before sewing the white strips in place to see how it will look.
It is all sewn together now and pinned waiting to be quilted (sorry for the bad pic).

I used a piece of fleece instead of quilt batting as it was cheaper and I think will be a bit snugglier (if that's a word?). The back is plain yellow and I think I'll use either the blue of green for the binding.
Will post a final picture when done.