It took me 4 months to finish my Rubber Duckies quilt. It feels like a lot for me, but I had my first baby in January hence less time to sew. It ended up as a double-sided quilt with FPP top and improv backing.
How did it all start?
In September 2018 I designed a Rubber Ducky block in EQ8.
Use Promo code EQ8IRINA for 20% off of the entire ElectricQuilt.com (EQ8, EQ8 upgrades, books, add-ons, etc.).
I designed a 10 inch block with two facing options left and right. Thus you can make as many duckies as you want looking at each other, away from each other, after each other and so on.
I sewed only four blocks then.
And made a mini quilt out of them eventually.
I was hoping to sew a big ish duck quilt one day. Here is my first design of the quilt in EQ8.
I didn’t make the quilt in 2018 as I was pregnant and had my baby at the end of January 2019. First two months were proper baby moon. Then in March I realised that the Festival of Quilts is already in August and it would be great to sew the quilt for it. It would also be great to make a quilt fully designed by me. Duckies felt like a perfect match and the pattern is still relatively fresh, not even a year old. It’s also my first ever entry to the Festival of Quilts.
I created a new quilt layout in EQ8 and randomly coloured the ducks.
I was thinking of fabrics for the quilt, tried few different colour options in EQ8. I wanted ducks to stand out, to be very colourful and vibrant. Alison Glass is definitely the best designer for it! I picked 20 bright and colourful AG fat quarters. I needed to decide the background colour too. I wanted to make it light blue (as the water) at first or something dark, but then decided on a creamy colour. I didn’t feel very comfortable with low volume background though as I normally prefer dark backgrounds. However I knew that this time it had to be low volume so my vision works.
I started sewing my first block in early April and my last block was sewn around the beginning of June.
I hoped to sew blocks every evening. However it didn’t happen of course. Sometimes when I was lucky and my baby was sleeping after 7 – 8 pm, I could sew a duck in the evening. Some evenings I was too exhausted to sew or had to do home chores. I found it pretty much impossible to sew during the day time. In the beginning it felt like my sewing was going very well and according to the schedule, but after I made 10 out of 20 ducks, it started being more difficult to sew without any distractions in the evening. It could take 3 to 4 evenings to finish a ducky. It was stressful and I kept losing faith that I could finish the whole quilt in time. But I slowly persisted.
It also took me some time to sew all the ducky blocks in a quilt top. I had some matching problems too, hence it felt like ages.
After the top was completed I decided to use my fat quarter remains to sew improv backing. I cut lots of strips of different width.
In about a week my backing was ready
Spray basting with Odif 505 spray never takes long. I have only ever used this spray for basting.
And it took me a week to quilt it. I chose improv free motion free style crooked line. It makes the whole quilt look quirky and fun in my opinion.
See the finished pics of top and back of the quilt right at the beginning of this blog post.
Yes I finished it in time and I cannot be happier!
This quilt was delivered to NEC for the Festival of Quilts already and I cannot wait to see it hanging there, nevermind the competition.
If you read this blog post you most likely got here through my Instagram or saw this quilt at The Festival of Quilts. Thanks for reading till the end 🙂
If you like the Rubber Ducky block (and quilt), you can get the block pattern on my Payhip.
Irina xxx
Recent Comments