Collaborative Party Quilting

I know I shared some photos yesterday of the day I have been waiting for to share the love.  It was the day where I could show my love for my DIL and how grateful I am that she is carrying my grandson. This will be my first grandchild.  I have been sewing for weeks getting ready for the baby shower and that explains my lack of quilting blog posts.  I feel like I have been vamping, but I didn't want to show too much because I wanted Olivia to have some surprises. 

 

Now that I have had some time to rest and recoup I can share a few more details. 3 of Olivia's friends, my other DIL and I made the shower together. It was a book theme and we asked for children's books instead of a card.  It was the start of quite a library.   I took responsibility for the party favors and I volunteered to do a "craft" instead of playing baby shower games. 

Can you tell that games are not my thing?

Party favors using Mother Goose themed fabric made with a little help from my friends
 

The craft - I wanted to make a collaborative quilt with everyone's participation for the new baby. This meant that all the guests were to create a block and then sign it.  So I had to come up with a theme.  Several danced through my brain.  Olivia's sister actually came up with the one I used - FISH!  My son loves to fish and had many fish tanks growing up. 

This would acknowledge his presence in the process!

 

I designed fish body parts that were interchangeable so each fish would be unique. 

 

 Think Mr. Potato Head.

I prepped a bunch of different fabric to be fusible, cut them out, removed the release paper and organized them by body type.

 

I made a sample and  a direction list for the guests to follow.  I wanted it to be fun, friendly and fool-proof. A few of the women were my quilting friends and they were great helpers.   It turned out that it was not that hard to get everyone to participate and I heard very little whining.

 Creativity was in the air.  

 

I had labels to be filled out for each block.  I wanted the signature to stand out instead of blending into the background. Although I have used Pigma pens for years, I think they are a little hard for non-quilters to use for writing on fabric.  There just isn't a good flow.  So I did some experimentation, which included a trip through the washing machine and dryer and settled on using Gel pens.  Heat setting with a dry iron made them permanent.  The writing flows smoothly and they come in a bunch of colors.

 

I provided some fabric for practicing and had lots of extra labels for any mistakes.  I left the release paper on for stability while writing.

 

As the blocks went up on my design wall, excitement grew.  Each fish was cuter than the next. 

 

 And I even saw some of the women rearranging the blocks. That made me feel good.

 

And most importantly, the mother to be just loved it

and created her own block with her hubby, my son. 

 

I can't wait to start blanket stitching these fishy blocks. I have 2 months to finish before the arrival of Baby Lynch and machine applique is one of my favorite things to do. It's certainly  a lot more fun than playing baby shower games.

 

In the next few days, I'll share some of my gifts that I made, with some tutorials. 

 Then I'll get back to my quilts.