Welcome to my stop on the Making Us Laugh blog hop, hosted by Joan of
MooseStashQuilting 😊 Joan first proposed this hop ages ago, but the timing couldn't possibly be better as I know we need all the laughs we can find these days.
I knew right away when I signed up that I wanted to make a sewing related mini quilt for this hop, so I headed to Pinterest to see what I could find for memes. There are so many! The more I looked, the more I realized that my mini was going to need to include words. I didn't want to piece letters, but I didn't want to applique them, either, or do reverse applique. I briefly considered doing something different altogether, but then I remembered the crayon quilts I've seen. I had never tried the technique before, but it certainly sounded simple enough.
I had my technique and a theme, but I still couldn't decide what the mini would say, until Laura posted a picture of a tshirt in her
Sewing and Quilting Deals fb group (Are you a member? You should be! She shares lots of great deals in the group). The phrase on the shirt was exactly what I was looking for!
How often have I wished I could say that to get out of things! Meeting? I can't...I'm quilting today. Housecleaning? I can't...I'm quilting today. 😄 It's the perfect excuse for getting out of anything we don't want to do!
The crayon technique is super simple and would make a great project to do with kids. If you have kids, you probably have crayons and if you're a quilter you definitely have bits of fabric lying around that they could colour and turn into mini quilts. This would also work on any light coloured tshirts you have, too. Just don't go to the store and buy anything right now...these don't count as essential purchases. #flattenthecurve
I started by printing out my phrase. I've seen crayon quilts done with plenty of pictures, too, so this isn't only for words. If you are good at hand lettering, you could certainly do that instead, but my writing isn't much to look at, so the computer font is prettier. I chose a font called Harrington, which is the same one I use for the titles on my quilt patterns, and I think I set the size to be 100. It was most of a sheet of paper, anyway. Then I used my fancy-pants lightbox to transfer the outline to my Northcott solid white fabric. Yes, we still have a lot of snow.
I chose to trace my letters using a regular pencil because I wanted to have that dark outline around my letters. If you don't want to see the traced lines, you might want to use an erasable pen of some sort. Just be aware that you will also need to iron this, so that might be a factor in what you use.
Once the letters are traced, it's time to pick colours! I picked through our crayons, looking specifically for
Crayola ones. I find when I'm colouring on paper other brands (especially cheap ones) can leave waxy globs on the paper and I really didn't want that on my quilt. One random brand crayon snuck in, though, so I guess I wasn't paying as close attention as I thought I was.
Then colour! No fancy skills needed here...just fill in the space. Because my crayons are mostly old and used, I sometimes needed to scribble on scrap paper to try to get a bit of a point on the crayon to make it easier to colour in my skinny spaces.
When it's all coloured, lay the fabric on top of a paper towel and put another paper towel on top, then iron with a hot iron and no steam. The heat will melt the wax and the paper towel will absorb it. Keep going until no wax is left on the fabric.
I found I couldn't really see the wax on the paper towel, except for the first press when a small amount of colour transferred to the paper towel, so I ran my fingers over the letters after I had pressed it a few times. When I couldn't see or feel any more wax, I pressed another time just to be certain I got it all and then figured it was good.
Since this is a mini, it was the perfect way to use up another bit of my abundant
Warm and Natural batting scraps, plus another piece of Northcott white for the backing. And then it was time to quilt! Again, since this is a mini, and because I started the quilting the same day school was shut down indefinitely and I needed a bit of stress relief, I went all in with the tiny quilting. I started by outlining each letter and doing teeny-tiny stippling all around them in
Aurifil 2024.
I purposely stippled an irregular shape around the words. I didn't want it to look rectangular, though I did try to keep it looking sort of even. After the stippling, I switched to mint green (
Aurifil 2835) and made a round of tiny pebbles. After the green, I used blue (4140) and then purple (
4225) to finish it off. I had thought I might do the first round of pebbles and then change to swirls or something different, but I really liked the look of just pebbles. Plus, it's a mini, so even with tiny pebbles it didn't take long. I love that it reminds me of cobblestones.
Did I mention the pebbles are tiny? Here's a picture with a bobbin for scale.
As always, I love the back.
I love the pop of the letters, especially.
With the purple pebbles at the edge, I finished it off with a purple Island Batik fabric for the binding.
The quilt finished at 10 ¼ x 13 ½ and it makes me ridiculously happy every time I see it 😊
Before I send you off to see the other projects shared today for the blog hop, I'd love to have you sign up for
The Bulletin, my monthly newsletter where I share fun things to make and news from here. You'll also receive my Wind Farm quilt pattern when you sign up.
Also, I've extended my Anniversary Sale for the
Stay Home and Shop Hop, so you can still
save 25% off all my printed or PDF patterns until April 2nd. The prices are already marked down, so no coupon code is needed.
Thanks for stopping by! Now, hop on over to the rest of today's bloggers to see what they've made to make us laugh.
Monday March 23
