Gaijin Creations: March 2009

As a Canadian living abroad in Japan for over 10 years, I find my inspirations to be quite eclectic and diverse. Whether it's the local grocery store, the children I teach, my family and friends or the environment I live in, my mind is always racing with new ideas. Over the past few years I have been trying to express these ideas through various sewing projects. In this blog I will try and showcase some of these creations. Some were miserable failures but others were wonderfully beautiful.

Last year, my sister Anita had a beautiful baby girl. In celebration of this miracle I set off to make my first quilt, a baby quilt.

Basic Instructions

Cutting: Create 2 templates out of clear plastic sheets(by using a clear template you can choose ideal and suitable sections of your material). One of the templates is of a hexagon and another template in the shape that somewhat looks like a flower; your hexagon shape plus curved petals. The latter is best made with a compass. Be very careful and as accurate as possible as this will later influence the beauty of your finished product.

Next using the hexagon template, cut one shape from batting and one shape from your chosen top fabric (you do not need to have a seam allowance).

Next using the flower shaped template cut one shape, plus a 1cm seam allowance from your chosen backing fabric.

Using a "hera roulette" wheel like tool, trace over the flower template shape so that you create easy to fold beautiful curves. I used some special fabric glue to paste the seam allowance.

Place the backing hexagon with the curved petals wrong side up and centre the batting and then the hexagon on top, right side up. Fold down all the curves(from the backing) on top of the hexagon. Pin all three layers and baste.

I then stitched the curves using an applique stitch.

Quilting was all done by hand using the pretty material as a guide for sewing lines.
I also added some embroidery to make the flower shape really jump out.

For this quilt I made 23 full sized squares, plus 4 half sized squares. I bought this material which is no longer in stock on an online auction. This beautiful plum blossom cotton material was created by a Japanese designer, Junko Onishi. I love the rich blue color, the placement of the flowers and the texture of the material.

Once you are finished the quilting, to join the framed hexagons together, place two right sides together and ladder stitch the edge. Because they are backed and quilted already, you are done!