Owl Tumbler Quilt

Owl Quilt for Baby Girl Vickers

I don't know if I'll remember how to do it again, but hey--I got these two pictures from my iPhone into my laptop!!

(bowing)  Thank you very much.

I did the appliqued owl on Sunday afternoon.  It is machine appliqued, but I think it looks fine (and it will be very sturdy for laundry purposes).

Okay, for those wanting to do something like this, notice, dimensions:  16 tumblers tall by 17 wide, 272 pieces altogether.  Each concentric square (can squares be concentric or is there a better word for what I mean?) has an accent color on the four corners.  The center, off-white panel needed to be an even number of tumblers top to bottom and an odd number of tumblers side to side, in order to make the figure-8 shape (I liked the panel angling in at the top and bottom better than angling out).

The finished size of each tumbler is 3 inches tall by 2 1/2 " wide (averaging the top and bottom).  So, figure out how big you want your quilt to be, and do the math.

Now, how did I pick all those fabrics?  (There are 40 different fabrics in there.)  I picked out the one fabric that was my focal point (the blue fabric with the owls on it) and then everything else coordinates with that.

This pattern (tumblers) is also called Lava Lamps.  If you look at two of the tumbler pieces stacked up, you will see the lava lamp in there.  I think it would be cool to do one with a solid color background fabric and bright lava lamps all over it.

I am still playing with this pattern (obviously) but I think that you can do nearly anything you can do with squares, with the tumbler shapes, sort of.  Think about a rail fence layout or a courhouse square layout with log cabin blocks.  Hmmm . . .  I think the thing to do is get some fabrics you like, cut out a bunch of tumblers, and arrange and rearrange them into different shapes.  I wish that somebody was printing up some tumbler graph paper, because it would be swell to be able to color in your design on paper first.  If such a thing exists, I have not seen it.  Try grouping similar colors together to make stripes or other designs.

Remember, Karen has the Accuquilt cutter, so get with her this week to cut out your tumblers.  I'm looking forward to next weekend already!