TARDIS Quilt

This summer I took up quilting. My first attempt was a baby blanket for my cousin's darling. I detailed the quilted sunflower here, but at the time of that post I hadn't done the actual "quilting" part.
 Making the fronts of quilts is complicated and requires much more than just creativity (there's this thing called measuring that I'm kinda horrible at...) but quilting the finished product to the backing and fluff is a-whole-nother project in and of itself. Especially since prior to this experience I'd only ever hand-quilted. And by that, I mean I really just randomly tacked down corners.

So after finishing the front of the sunflower baby blanket, I attempted quilting with my sewing machine for the first time. I bought some fuzzy flannel and some medium stuffing and went to work.



My mom had suggested not sewing the edges until after I had done my pattern. Since I attempted a spiral pattern on the sunflower, I ended up with this. Radials are bound to cause twisting of the layers.

 

But, because I don't bother measuring anyway, I just folded up the edges and sewed them together. 

 

The finished product was adorbs, which was all I could ask. 

A close up of the radial quilting. 

 

After I finished this quilt, I had a second one on my Christmas list. I'd seen images of a TARDIS quilt design on Pinterest. As my sister and I are avid Dr. Who fans (we blame our dad), and she lives in Chicago where it is often literally below freezing, I decided she absolutely needed a TARDIS quilt.

 

I  bought a jelly roll of blue scraps and started laying it out. 

 

If you don't know, the TARDIS is a blue Police Box from England (well, it's really a space ship that can change shape, but got stuck in police box form and can manipulate time...).

 

I ran out of solid blues, so I searched my scrap bin for something and found leftovers from Nana's present a few years before. 

 

I sewed the inside panels together first, then the blue edging. I waited to finish the top last.

 

Some detail.

 

But I still hadn't bought any cloth for the background yet. I was thinking something black or grey and originally had wanted to keep it whole and just stick the TARDIS on top. Then I found some awesome cloth in my scrap bin. 

 

The black was originally used to decorate a bulletin board and the purple stars were curtains in my room in high school. I liked the wavy-ness of the black because it reminded me of a David Tenant quote: "It's a timey-wimey, spacey-wacey kind of thing."

This time, I sewed the edges together first.

 

I did two edges and then quilted. 

 

I decided to also make the quilting "timey-wimey."

 

It was a lot easier and turned out a whole lot straighter, as well. 

 

Then I folded the other edges over and sewed them down. 

The finished product made me very proud! It's just big enough to be a throw blanket. 

 

Baby sis loved it!