Girl with Swing Quilt

Well I saw a tutorial that I just had to try! Comfortstitching has written up a wonderful tutorial complete with templates for this little quilt. (You can find the link in my tutorials I want to try section!) So the other night I finally decided to break out the scraps and start putting this together. I wanted to try out some of the techniques used to see if I would use them in my doll quilt. So I’m practicing! What a pretty way to practice! Might as well make something pretty while you are learning a technique.

The first step is deciding on your background color and using a bunch of scraps (about 1″ square or so). This was one of my favorite parts…cutting up the scraps and using little bits of this and that. It was like a puzzle getting them all laid out just slightly overlapped. And of course finding the right balance of prints and colors.


angela-pingel-girl-on-swing-initial-layout

The next step is good practice for anyone who has not free motion quilted. This is a fun way to start. It’s little and really you can’t mess it up. Basically the idea here is to outline each block so that all the edges are tacked down. I used a white thread to blend…you want the applique thread to pop later, so you don’t want anything too distracting yet.

angela-pingel-girl-on-swing-green-scraps

And some detail shots.

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angela-pingel-girl-on-swing-green-detail

Then comes the applique and the free motion stitching with dark contrasting thread…this is where it gets a little scary. LOL. But one thing I did learn is that you can rip out the stitching if you are not happy with it…so take comfort!

angela-pingel-girl-on-swing-stitched

Detail of apples on the ground…I did this to practice tiny stitching way before I tackled the girl. I love how these turned out.

angela-pingel-girl-on-swing-feet

Detail of tree stitching. I would definitely recommend drawing lightly in pencil where you want those branches to go…unless you’re a super artist. I’m not and I needed the guidelines.

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And then came the toughest part…saved her for last. At first I had a different dress, but the fabric blended too much with the tree. I made her a little red head and gave her a blue jumper with a little color done in stitching. I had to rip out some stitches while tackling this part, but overall I’m pretty happy with how it came out.

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A close up of all the applique work.

angela-pingel-girl-on-swing-stitched-detail

But I couldn’t just make her and do nothing with her. I decided to finish her off as a little quilt. It’s been a while since I did any straight line quilting. LOL. But I added the white border, quilted it and then added the hand sewn green binding.
angela-pingel-girl-on-swing-quiltI used a sweet blue print for the back that reminded me of little branches!


angela-pingel-girl-on-swing-backSo a nice little project. It took me a few days to do, but I didn’t work for too many hours on it. So now the question is who does it go to. Could I be possibly thinking of giving this beauty away to one of you? Hmmmm….

9 thoughts on “Girl with Swing Quilt”

  1. I've wanted to do this tutorial for a while and now I REALLY want to do it! Yours came out beautifully! I'll take it if it's homeless!

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