May December: Project Quilting Season 7: Through the Eyes of a Child MY FIRST CHALLENGE!

My 8 year old daughter (and dog lover) is always begging me to teach her to sew. Normally, I am too impatient and too much of a control freak to give her a chance...however, I happened to stumble across a post on Facebook from Persimon Dreams about a quilting challenge that was happening called Through The Eyes of a Child. The wheels started turning. I had the idea to combine my daughter's love of dogs, drawing, and her desire to learn to sew into a fun project we could do together! I hope you enjoy this piece of work from Bloomington, Indiana. I am thankful to Persimon Dreams for giving me the motivation to quit procrastinating about quilting (the whole process took me 24 hours!) and the opportunity to bond with my beautiful daughter.

First, I had her decide on something to draw for me to to turn into a quilted piece of fabric art. Of course she chose our dog, Tessa, for the subject matter.

I found a charm pack from Free Spirit Fabrics which I purchased a few years back from Fat Quarter shop and hadn't used yet to piece some brown fabric together to be the form for Tessa's head and body.

Then, I had Molly redraw Tessa on top of the squares I had pieced together, and I cut it out. Next, I used some fusible interfacing underneath to make a 3d effect.

After that came my least favorite part: applique. Applique was a requirement for the challenge, which is unfortunate, because I am not very good at it at all. Nevertheless, I ended up with this:

After I had appliqued the fabric Tessa onto a fat quarter I had purchased from Ginger Threads, my favorite local quilt shop, located in Bedford, Indiana, I basted and quilted the top using free motion quilting. Again, not really skilled at FMQ, but my daughter wanted me to do it that way. It actually went fairly quickly.