A Closer Look at Project QUILTING Challenge Sweet Treats–Love Roller Coaster

I still have 8 more quilts that others made that I’ll show you a closer look at either later this afternoon or early tomorrow morning.  BUT there’s this great Finish It Up Friday Link up Part over on Crazy Mom Quilts that I enjoy linking up to so I’m sneaking my finish for the Project QUILTING Sweet Treats Challenge – ‘Love Roller Coaster’ in between some closer looks.

Oh!  Before I forget – Happy Valentine’s Day!  Here’s a cute shot from my girls’ Valentine’s shoot with Karmen Linder Photography!

It’s actually quite fitting that today I show you how ‘Love Roller Coaster’ came to be.  So, when I heard that the challenge was going to be inspired by Candy I knew it was going to fit into another challenge I had to  finish before March – one that required us to be inspired by a song from the 70’s.  I had already decide that I was going to be inspired by the song ‘Love Rollercoaster’ by the Ohio Players.  I knew it would be perfect because love – hearts – candy hearts.  Rollercoasters – amusement parks – candy and whimsy.  I could do this.

 

I never used to sketch but recently I have started to do so before some of my more arty quilts.  Above is the initial sketch I had for this piece.  Obviously I didn’t completely follow it but I think you’ll see that I did incorporate much of it – either in my piecing, my applique or in the free motion quilting.My initial fabric ‘pull’ for the project.  These were the fabrics that first caught my eye for the ideas I had.  I used some, added others, and never used a few.  And of course…Candy Land…there is MOUNDS of inspiration in the box cover…I knew somehow I would incorporate Candy Land into my quilt.

To create the rollercoaster effect instead of appliqueing it all I figure I would do a bit of piecing.  Of course, Ricky Tims’ convergence technique came to my mind right away. One of my favorite things about the convergence is that you really don’t know if it’s actually going to work the way you want it to until you…cut it up, and sew it back together (I did add a few strips of dark kona in there…the vertical bars on the rollercoaster need to be the strongest you know) and then…

you cut it up again and sew it back together – again.  And finally at this point – you know if the fabric choices you initially picked out actually worked.  I was happy.My next step was to add in the rails for the rollercoaster.  I did opt for fusing on the rollercoaster rails.  I used the sketch I drew to trace them onto the fusible, then ironed to a dark grey Kona.  This is one of those situations that I like to use my mini rotary cutter on.  It cuts much smoother curves than if I were to use a normal scissors.I’ll admit – here I wish my rollercoaster would have curved a bit more and intersected at the bottom and even though I traced it this way on my strips they just wouldn’t lay like that when I put them down onto the fabric.  So – this is how it came out – which is still good – just not quite as I had envisioned.I needed a background!  These fabrics from the 1001 Peeps collection reminded me of whimsical candy land castles – I thought it would be fun.  And of course mixing the blue with the purple fabric was just a bonus in my mind.I cut out my converged heart and pin basted it down to to my new background.  Then I blanket stitched the outer edge down and basically reverse appliqued it on.  As you can see here I cut out the inner heart that was now behind the rollercoaster heart.  This makes less thickness and less seams to quilt over later on.Here’s the sketch I had been working off of for my rollercoaster heart.  You can see some of the other whimsical features I have sketched on here.

I added my rollercoaster car!

And here you can see my cotton candy cloud and candy land tree are on…And now – three candy land trees, a group of balloons, and a bunch of lollipop and sucker flowers.  I basted the quilt with spray and used a thin batting.  I had a lot of fun trying out many different free motion patterns and designs all over this quilt.  Here are some closer looks at some of the patterns I went with.

I bound the quilt with some of the background fabric, a little of the pink hearts and a chunk of red print.  I often use a variegated fabric binding.  And with this crazy whimsical quilt, I felt that I couldn’t go wrong adding more whimsy.

And with that – now you know how ‘Love Roller Coaster’ came to be!

Before Saturday night, be sure to head over to the Public Voting poll and cast your vote for your FOUR favorite quilts created!