Sunday, February 12, 2012

Papa Woobie

Here's the "Papa Woobie" aka, the yellow silk tie pieces revisited.

This morning I  took the remaining pieces and made a Rail Fence variation in 6" blocks.  That was only about 22" square.   I thought it would be a good baby quilt, but wasn't quite big enough.  When I went to the fabric store to buy Minky, I thought I'd get enough for strips on the front as well as the back.  Unfortunately, the only yellow they had at the chain fabric store was dark gold, not this pale yellow.   I hadn't taken this piece of fabric and didn't realize how very terrible it looked until I got home.  So, plan B was to add 6" strips of mauve silk.

I spent the afternoon quilting this with the walking foot and pale yellow thread.  I continued the random width strips into the outer binding, and I'm shocked about how much I like the yellow stitching on the mauve silk.  The quilt ended up 33" square.

If you haven't been following this step-by-step, each piece of silk has light weight fusible interfacing on all the silk fabric.  I didn't add any batting, so it's just the silk, interfacing & minky backing.  I pre-washed all the silk fabric in cold then air dried.  Then it was ironed on hot with steam, and a spray bottle of water on occasion.  After all the machine quilting was done, I serged the raw edges and threw it into the washing machine on warm/cold with regular detergent, then dried on medium heat in the drier.  This is what it looks like now.  Silk is super tough...I'm not sure why everyone thinks it's destined to undergo terrible dry-cleaning chemicals.

What's with the "Papa Woobie" name?  I was thinking about my brother who donated the ties. He is newly a  Grandpa-by-marriage.  And then I started thinking about my dad, whom my girls referred to as Papa.  He was famous as a "nap coach".  This quilt is so amazingly soft that I think it would have amazing magical properties in making anyone wrapped up in it fall asleep instantly.  It's not quite big enough to be a respectable quilt, but it has passed the Skater Girl Amazing Texture Woobie rating.  This quilt and a good story (yawn) will make anyone (sigh) ready to ...snooooo ooo oo zzzz ZZZZZZ ZZZZZ

1 comment:

drtomconrad said...

Cute. Looks to be a very nice quilt. Good job with the re-use of the ties.