Landscape Quilts – Child’s Play!

I’ve been playing with a new version of my Repliqué technique – and it’s great for making picture perfect landscapes.

My Washington grandkids just went home after a 2 week long visit 🙁  . Hanna (who learned to quilt when she was 5 – click here to read that post) told me she wanted to make a mountain landscape quilt for her room. Since I was already playing with this technique, I decided it was time to test it out and see if it was as user friendly as I thought it might be.

I had her find a picture on the internet and we printed it out to size.

She then chose her fabrics. She wanted to make her quilt in purples and I had a gradation fabric in my stash that was just right.

She sewed:

trimmed:

then sewed and trimmed some more:

Because there is no satin stitching step, it is quite quick and easy. Here’s a shot after the final mountain was added:

And here’s a picture of the back:

Next it was time to quilt and bind. She machine quilted over the Repliqué stitching, then sewed the binding to her quilt from the front. We folded and clipped the binding to the back and she hand-stitched it down on the flight home.

She got it almost finished and promised she would complete it at home.

I’m pretty proud of my 11 year old artist – and I think she’s pretty pleased too.

And one more thing – I showed her an appliqué stitch to secure the binding to the back. She quickly turned it into a whip-stitch, and I decided it was fine for her first effort on the back. Then she asked me why hers didn’t look like mine. I explained and showed her the appliqué stitch again. She was off and running. My original stitches run for about an inch to the left of the clip (did I mention Hanna is left handed?). Her tiny whip stitch continued from there for about 2″. I did a quick re-demo and the rest (around the corner and down) is her appliqué stitch (she’s a pretty quick study).

A month ago I asked Hanna’s 5 year old cousin Sommer if she wanted to make a quilt, since Hanna made her first quilt when she was 5. Sommer thought for a moment and replied “no thanks”. After watching Hanna make the landscape quilt during her recent visit, Sommer told me she changed her mind and wants to make a quilt. Stay tuned!