Bungle Jungle .. A new quilt

A new quilt!

A baby cousin for Little Imp is on the way, so there is a need for a quilt to be made.

I bought a Layer Cake, Moda Bungle Jungle, a little while back when my brother was in the US & I didn’t have to pay postage and now I get to slice and sew. Very exciting. (In case you don't know a 'layer cake' is a selection of forty 10 inch fabric squares from a single fabric collection)

Hours were spent considering different patterns until I came back to a floating block design. The tricky part with the Bungle Jungle fabric was still wanting to include some sort of Game of Same option and also keep the animals in the animal prints relatively whole so they can be recognizable, kind of like an ‘eye spy’ quilt.

The initial pattern plan is this…no doubt it will change a bit as I go, but a bit of a mud map to go by.

I divided the fabrics into four different sets of colours

aqua and navy

green with navy highlights

yellow and red

 And grey and red.

There are also squares of animal prints in each of the different colours that look something like this:

I didn't take any pics of these animal prints before I started fussy cutting these out to make what will become a bit of a matching game. Not quite the game of 'exactly the same' but a game of 'kind of the same'! Matching the same animals but with different background colours ... the downside of only having a 10inch square of each piece of fabric. You can see some of the pairs I began cutting out to start with here.

Still not sure how I am going to use the large animal print square in the quilt...time will tell....

Felt Memory Game

A Felt Memory Game...or 'The Game of Same'.

I've seemingly only been watching the Olympics over the past while given the lack of updates, but I have been busy crafting behind the scenes, promise!

A long time ago, shortly after making Little Imp's eye spy quilt, I came across this beautiful felt memory game on the Purl Bee blog.  My idea was that one day I would make a similar felt game but one that could also be used for matching to pictures on her eye spy quilt. Then, about a month ago now, Little Imp suddenly started matching similar things and saying 'Same'.  It seemed that the time had come to do something about making my version - 'The Game of Same'.  Perhaps not quite as pretty as the Purl Bee version, but also much simpler & faster to do.  After all the cutting out, the sewing up was surprisingly fast.

Matching same-same cards to onto the quilt

 Basic How To
Materials needed (enough to make 20 pairs):

• Felt (I found some felt much stiffer than others, the stiffer felt works better for this project)
• Medium interfacing
• Assorted print fabrics - for this project I used left over eye spy quilt scraps
• Clear home made templates (helpful but not essential)
• Cutting mat, ruler & rotary cutter

                                       

• Measure & mark 40x  3 inch squares onto the felt & then cut out into pairs using scissors. Given my cutting & measuring skills are not perfect, I found keeping the pairs together to start meant they were matched better when I came to cut & stitch. 
• Measure & mark 40x  2.5 inch squares onto the interfacing & cut out using scissors into individual squares.
• Cut assorted print fabrics into 40x  2 inch squares, 2 of each fabric.  This is where a home made 2x2 inch clear plastic templates can be useful. Use them to work out which part or the best part of the design/print you will fit into a 2inch square before cutting.  Although each pair is from the same fabric, for this game I wasn't fussed the picture on each one wasn't exactly the same.  Nothing wrong with a bit of a Game of Same-Same challenge!
• To make each single memory 'card' do the following:  Cut a felt pair of squares in half.  Centre a fabric print square on top of one felt square and centre an interfacing square underneath the felt.  

• Machine stitch around the edge of the print fabric using a blanket stitch, catching the interfacing as you do so.  I didn't bother using pins, as long as the fabric print is centered, the interfacing doesn't have to be perfectly aligned.  Trim any interfacing closer than 1/4 inch from edge of felt.

                             

•  Place the other square of felt onto the back to cover over the interfacing and align & pin together. 

• Machine stitch using straight stitch around the outside of the memory card. Trim if needed to neaten.

back & front of cards

• Then make another card to get your first pair.  Repeat as many times as you like!

• I also made a matching felt bag (of course!) to store The Game of Same.  Little Imp does like her game & for her age the game of matching cards to her quilt is just perfect!

Finally, the Eye Spy quilt is complete

A friend's little one had an 'eye spy' quilt that looked like so much fun I asked mum to make one for Little Imp.  She agreed, but left it up to me to begin to collect fun bits of fabric to use in the quilt.  It didn't take long for me to become hooked with all the beautiful fabrics I found on line and, with a bit of encouragement from mum, I decided I'd try my hand at piecing together a quilt myself.

The design of the quilt took shape as I gathered all the fabric pieces, and I ended up using a central plain colour square surrounded by 8 coordinating picture fabric squares to make up each block.
The process of working out which part of each fabric would be the most fun to use, and the ordered process of rotary cutting appealed to methodical me, but the part I really enjoyed was playing around with all the fabric squares to create a layout that I was happy to look at.  A layout where adjoining colours worked together and any fabric doubles were far enough apart not to be noticeable.  I spent hours just playing!

One of many trial layouts

 The end result, a 4x4 layout of blocks, quilting around each block in purple and around each central coloured square in matching colour thread.  As you can see, Little Imp isn't quite at the right age just yet to appreciate the 'eye-spy' feature of the quilt.  Oh so interested she was in crawling all over the pieces as I was in the process of trying to design the layout, and then when I wanted a photo of her sitting on the finished product she just kept crawling away!