Stormy's Quilt and Screen Printing

My little niece Storm is 27 months old and absolutely gorgeous - blond hair, blue eyes - and VERY headstrong, in fact she could probably be my daughter lol. She has her three older cousins firmly wrapped around her little finger, from "go away" when she wants to do something on her own to "TEEZZZEE, come here" when she expects them to jump at her command lol. She started her life as an undiagnosed breech birth (outch for my sister), had a tied tongue but nothing ever seems to stop her. Storm as a teenager will be very interesting....

My sister and BiL bought her a big bed because she keeps on waking herself up in the cot or in the travel cot when they are away. Well, the big bed had its own challenges, a different size to the regular beds so the new mattress didn't fit etc. Her txt from yesterday said she put Storm down for her afternoon nap in the big bed for the first time, Storm decided to play and rearrange her room for an hour until she put her into the cot where she fell asleep straight away lol. Somehow I'm glad that we're out of that stage!

Well, I hope her special quilt will help her learning that the big girl's bed is for sleeping! I have written a few posts about it, so here's the summary (I will add more pics as I get access to the laptop - 5 of us on holiday means there is a waiting list;-)):
After I had made my Pinwheels which I turned into a table cloth, there were heaps of left overs in the most gorgeous colours. I chose triangles in green plus a solid and white and a solid and pieced them into rectangles. These were cut to 3 1/2 x 6 1/2". After playing with them for a little while, I decided to arrange them in a tesselating pattern. The resulting blank squares I filled with white 3 1/2" squares from the sheeting material I want to dye. Lovely Suz helped me sort out how to piece the tesselating pieces to minimise partial seams.
The completed tesselation section was fairly small, so first I added a 2" white border, then from my pinwheel scraps I cut 2 1/2" strips of pieced jellyroll strips (if you remember, the pinwheels were constructed from 5 strips cut at 60 deg angle). This still wasn't quite big enough, so I added another white 2 1/2" border. Next I took the remaining scraps apart to get as many 2 1/2" squares as I could - I had to add some in from the white sheeting but they blended in well. On top, I appliqued flowers and hearts on the white squares and her name on the top of the quilt - Tada!

For the quilting, I knew I wanted to get away from stippling and from feathers. On A Few Scraps, Christina had shared branching designs for quilting. So after laying out the backing with loads of pins in the carpet and sandwiching it with polyester batting and the pieced top, I started quilting a small creeping vine with leaves and swirls. In retrospect I should have put it in my Flynn Quilting Frame, my last few projects were smaller and / or QUAYG and not with polyester which has little 'cling'. No puckers on the back, but some 'bubbles' in the front not helped by the fact that I quilted in all directions. It's not something I would put into an exhibition, but I still love it and I am proud to give it to Storm!

On a completely different note, on friday I had coated one of my screen with Photo Emulsion but only got to develop it on Saturday. Unfortunately all I got were some faint marks on the emulsion. I put it down to the emulsion being too thick or the exposure not long enough. I did it again, this time using a 'proper' scooper - handy DH made me one from an old coat hanger rail. Amazingly, as soon as you use the right equipment it works :) It was a breeze to coat the screen with the emulsion which has a honey like consistency. I put it to dry in the garage, out of direct UV light as directed. With the beautiful sunshine we had yesterday, I put it outside in the sun to develop with the image on top. Unfortunately again all I got were faint marks!!! Very frustrating. I followed the intructions here
In the meantime I will design some patterns fror Lesley from Silkscreen Maker http://www.silkscreenmaker.com/ to burn onto Thermofax Screens - have a look at her site, thermofax screens are very easy to use. I'll add her details to my Suppliers' Page.

Later on today we're off to Whangarei for another appointment with oldest DS, also need to get to Auckland this week to pick up the new babysitter aka xbox360 kinnect. I better get sewing now to make the most of time!