My Life Adventure

April 14, 2008

MON 14 APR

MY CREATIVE JOURNEY - week 15 By Kelly

The card for this week -- Capture Your Past

 

Look back at some of your early kindergarten fingerpaintings, etc.  Well, I have NOTHING like that nor do my parents or anyone else for that matter. But some of them I see very clearly in my mind (especially my dino drawing in middle school!!) The best I can do is to look back in my Webshots albums at the earliest quilts I did and my early hand dyeing.  If you want to check it out, you can see my earlier work at http://community.webshots.com/user/royalevents

 

I guess I haven't been at it long enough to really see a change except from traditional piecing to more art quilts. (although with all the babies coming - I've been piecing a bit more lately.)

MON 14 APR

Tavi's Travel Adventure By Kelly

YEAH!!!  I'M  FINISHED!!!!!

 

This quilt has been a long time on the design wall.  Several times I had to stop and re-evaluate. Plus it took a bit of hand work.

 

OK, here is the story. 

 

My niece has a new son - Octavio Luis Silva born Jan 30, 2008.  I had made a quilt for their first son - Cai (short for Caitano) so I just HAD to make one for Tavi, too!!!  <VBG>  (If you want to see Cai's quilt, it is in my Webshot album. The link is in the My Creative Journey - week 15 post just before this one.) My niece told me she was getting the Zanzibar collection from Babies R Us for his nursery.  OK, so I look up the pictures of the Zanzibar collection.  It took several days for the design to really gel but then I had the beginning at least. 

 

I had some blue swirley fabric (two patterns actually) and some yellow/gold fabric with a kind of clump of grass motif on it.

 

I looked up Zanzibar on the internet and found a map of the island. I traced its general shape and had it blown up at Kinko's. Then I cut it out of the yellow/gold grass clump fabric. First I appliqued the island onto the smaller pattern blue swirl fabric and cut that out and appliqued that to the larger blue swirl pattern. I figured the ocean waves are smaller and more frequent closer to land.

 

Next I traced the animals of the Zanzibar collection from Babies R Us and used my fabrics to cut them out and applique them onto the island.  That was fine but it seemed lacking something.  Then it hit me!  Treasure Island!!  So I found a picture of a palm tree and a picture of a treasure chest (don't you just LOVE the internet???!!!) and appliqued the treasure chest half buried in sand under the palm tree. 

 

Then there was too much open blue space.  Well, all good treasure hunts need a ship to carry the treasure hunters, right?  I found a coloring book picture of a sailing ship and cut it out an appliqued it onto the ocean.  I named it the S S Tavi (don't know if you can see it in the picture below) Then I did slashed lines of the path from the ship to the treasure and put a red X where the treasure is.

 

Now the lower left seemed vacant.  I found a coloring book picture of three dolphins and cut those out and appliqued those in the lower corner. 

 

Cai's quilt had an leopard print Minkee on the backing so I chose a giraffe print Minkee to back this one.  (The Minkee was at the request of my niece because she liked it so much on the first quilt)

 

The label on the quilt is hand written because Cai's was hand written.  I did the title of the quilt with the lettering function on my machine (didn't have it when I made Cai's quilt). The finished quilt is 41" X 45"

 

Here is the resulting quilt for baby Tavi.  Presenting Tavi's Treasure Adventure!! (also known as TTA)

 

TTA - front

 

TTA - detail 1

 

TTA - detail 2

 

TTA - detail 3

 

TTA - backing

 

TTA - label

 

That's it.  In the mail it goes tomorrow.  I hope he likes it!