Around The World - Quilters' Guild AGM Dundee 2012

This is my 8 year old daughter Caitlin's Australian quilt which she had been working on since Christmas, her answer to the theme of 'Around the World' inspired by a school project on the country and my fabrics brought at my very first Festival on Quilts in Birmingham from Aussie Dreams, these make up most of the territories of Australia on the top right panel and the various animals and Uluru in the bottom left panel.

The rest of the fabric was all bought at the 2011 Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate, the bottom right was a Langa Lapu sun print from The African Fabric Shop.  They are a long time favourite of myself, my daughter and my mother, the owners, Magie and Bob, travel around Africa to source their fabrics directly from the weavers and dyers and each piece is unique.

For the first two panels, Caitlin sewed strips of fabric together then cross cut them to make the backgrounds of squares, using the sizes to give the effect of zooming in from outer space.  In the first panel she appliqued on Australia, New Zealand, Antartica and Indonesia and then appliqued the whole globe onto the dark spacey background.  In the second she used 505 spray to stick the Aussie Dreams fabrics down and appliqued them onto the squares background with a space dyed WonderFil thread she bought at her Quilters Guild Region 16 Regional Day.

In the third panel the sky, land and billabong were strips of fabric sewn together, then all the animals and the rock were appliqued on.  The sun and Uluru are reverse appliqued.

The koala and kangaroo joey were the successful product of my first foray into printing onto fabric with my laser printer with Crafty Computer Paper, who I've used before for inkjet printable fabric.  I printed onto their laser heat transfer paper and we carefully ironed the animals onto white fabric.  I was so nervous because the paper is not cheap, but the results were stunning.  Caitlin then used my Derwent Inktense pencils to colour in the kangaroo joey and a little bit of the koala joey, they are quite grey anyway, and then appliqued them on.

You can't see it, but the quilt is backed with the most fabulous green liquorice allsorts fabric.  Caitlin quilted in the ditch round each panel and also quilted a couple of stars with invisible thread.  She sewed on the binding, which is from the Very Hungry Caterpillar range by Makower, and I slip stitched it in place.  I found basting with 505 spray easy and it held the sandwich of quilt top, backing and 80/20 backing in place perfectly while she was machine quilting.

The borders are strips pieced in turn, and there is a kangaroo button from The Button Lady sewn onto the central square.

It can be difficult to fit the time and mental energy needed to focus on sewing inbetween the busy day to day life of an 8 year old and I was very proud of her hard work.  She created really all of this, designing and executing the whole thing with me acting as faciliator more than anything else, holding down the ruler for rotary cutting, paying for fabric, being an extra pair of hands and providing support if needed, moral and practical!  She won her class in the YQ competition for the Quilters' Guild AGM in Dundee and I freely admit to being a very proud mum!