Eleanor's Melman Quilt

My Little. Lady l-o-v-e-s Melman from the Madagascar films.

Such a long time ago (November 2012!) I told you about an end of bolt purchase from Eternal Maker, it is Michael Miller, Giraffe Love fabric.

I then had to buy some co-ordinating fabrics, some I bought with the Giraffe fabric and some a month or so later including Minky or Plush fabric for the reverse, also bought from the Eternal Maker.

I wanted to try something different and went for the Trellis quilt by The Jungs.

I then used white fabric for the trellis and borders.  I told you about the saga for that here, back in May 2014!

The top border I decided to make deeper than first intended as Little Lady had said that she wanted something 'rainbow' in her quilt and as there are seven colours of the rainbow and seven letters in her name....something sprang from that!

Using a variety of fabrics with a rainbow similarity, I decided to appliqué her name using lime green embroidery floss to blanket stitch.

It turned out like this......

(Please excuse it's screwed up appearance - it's getting LOTS of use)

With such a large quilt and a small amount of Giraffe Love, I used a calculator on Quilters Paradise. It is brilliant!  It is to calculate how much border to buy, but I put in the width of my purchased fabric, the length and width of my quilt top and then changed the border width until I knew I had sufficient fabric to cut a particular width of border and went with that!  It worked.  Slightly backwards I know, but it worked!

Having chosen the lovely, snuggly minky or plush fabric for the back, I needed to find a good tutorial on how to sew it successfully.

I turned to Pinterest and found a tutorial by Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew for quilting Minky, tips on sewing with Minky by Amy at The English Geek, a simple Minky Blanket Tutorial by Jenny at iCraft and a self-binding tutorial by Ashley at Make It & Love It.

When I laid my top out on my Minky, I discovered that I had JUST enough.  That would mean no self bind, and to be honest, I didn't want to do too much quilting as the prospect of ruining this quilt was too much to bear after all this time.  So I decided to use the simplest method by Jenny at iCraft of putting right sides together, sewing almost the whole way round and pulling the quilt through the gap and top stitching the seam all round to neaten and close the turning gap.

I asked The Hubs to amuse Little Lady for the day whilst I got down to some serious, concentrated sewing.

I used my label printing technique to print a label for my quilt and sewed that onto the Minky before I began, like this.......

I then cracked on with the main quilt joining the back and top and then top stitching around the edge, closing the turning gap on the way.

Want to see......?

OK, so here is my finished quilt.

Ta-daah........

I love the trellis effect and the Giraffe Love fabric................

And although I haven't quilted it, the simple Plush application to the back looks good......

What do you think...I'm SOOOOOO pleased and Little Lady is over the moon too!

I'm going to leave it for the moment and see if it needs quilting, I'm sort of hoping not so that there is no chance of messing it up after all the traumas and hard work...we'll see.

Little Lady has slept under it every night since, she is SO pleased with it.  Bless her.

I'll be back soon with another sewing ta-dah, a crochet update and quite possibly a crochet ta-dah too....it's all go here I tell you.  And in-between all that making, there has been some buying too....ooooops!

Hope your day is a good one and that you are getting done the things you need to get done and maybe a few you'd just like to take time over and enjoy.

Until the next time, toodle-pip,
Love
Nora
xxxx