Birthday girl

8 Nov

Nine years ago today this gorgeous girl was born;

bethan 1 day

I wanted to give her something handmade for her birthday, but funnily enough she has quite a lot of handmade things and I was struggling to come up with a plan. So I decided to paper piece an Orca and let her decide what she would like it made in to.  The pattern is from Joanna’s etsy shop and can be found here (along with other fantastic patterns).

I didn’t start sewing until Wednesday night, Joanna very helpfully codes all her pieces with the colour of the piece e.g. background, white or black, I normally write on every piece but didn’t need to this time.  It was quite nice to use just 3 different fabrics in this block after using so many in the And Sew On blocks!  The Orca is Universe in Night from the Curious Nature line by Parson Gray and Metro Living Circles in snow and the background is Quilt Blocks Marine Blue Hexagon Dots by Ellen Luckett Baker.

I laid the blocks out and discovered that I’d used a piece of background fabric where there should have been a black piece, so I unpicked that and replaced with the correct piece.

I got all but 3 of the 15 ‘blocks’ made, yesterday afternoon I got on with the last 3 and added them to the jigsaw.  I started stitching the blocks together and had all the top ones done when I spotted another error:

Untitled

You should be able to spot it too.  This time it was a pattern error and Joanna has now corrected it (if she wasn’t so helpful in coding the patterns it would have been my fault!).  So after a bit of cussing I unpicked a few seams and replace the offending fabrics with the right one.  Pretty soon I had this lovely creature:

Untitled

I wrapped it up and presented it to Bethan this morning – she was delighted (good girl) and decided that she would love me to make into a cushion cover, at that point I told her that we could make it together. I’ll share a photo when that’s done!

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20 Replies to “Birthday girl

  1. He’s gorgeous! You chose perfect fabrics. Shame about the unpicking but worth it in the end 🙂

  2. Super, super cute. So glad she loved it and can’t wait to see the finished pillow. I agree with Joanne that the fabrics are just perfect!

  3. Happy Birthday to your daughter!
    What a beautiful block! I just love Shape Moth’s designs and your fabric choices are perfect. I can’t wait until my daughter’s old enough to work on sewing projects with me. 🙂

  4. It turned out so cute! I love the fabrics that you used. I’ve done the same error myself so I know how frustrating it can be, but you have such a lovely block in the end!

  5. Gosh, what a fantastic birthday present! Love the orca and you’ll have so much fun together making him into a cushion

  6. fantastic! I know an 18 year old who loves orcas – I am going to have to make this for her!

  7. I am making a baby quilt with marine animals for my daughter-in-law who is a marine biologist, I have been also looking for this adorable Orca pattern but I have not found it . could you please help me find the pattern.
    Thank you, touchofnature@live.com

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