"Family" of Penguins Finished--post 2; Sixth Finish of 2nd Quarter 2021

Texture created in the penguins 

Normally, I would free motion quilt filler stitches in the open areas of a project. For this quilt, I decided that I would use lines to denote the Mama and the Daddy penguins. I free motioned echo quilted the curved lines on the Mama penguin first. I also echo quilted the head of the Daddy penguin. 

Next, I used the walking foot to quilt straight lines on the Daddy penguin. I'm trying to play more with the walking foot because it is easier on my body for the machine to feed the fabric using the feed dogs than it is for me to be pushing it. However, all the turning of the fabric takes some time and effort so I don't see myself quilting big pieces using the walking foot!

Back of quilt

In the baby penguin, I free motion quilted the name Pip because that was the name Veronica gave the abandoned baby penguin she took back to the research station to save from death. I filled in the background with loops to the point that if I hadn't told you that I had quilted the name, you wouldn't see it. For the upper left of the piece, I wanted to free motion quilt a texture that represented a cloud filled sky.

It was tricky to try to mimic the stitch length that I used during the free motion quilting. It was trickier to try to keep all the free motion stitching similar as well! I got close and I liked the texture that the lines gave the piece. I used a 40 weight Floriani polyester white thread for all the quilting in the white area. The sheen of the thread complimented the silver fleck in the white fabric. I quilted the white area in an afternoon. The most challenging part was determining where to start and what to use as filler stitches! (I used a cotton thread in the bobbin.)

Detail of label

All that was left was to quilt the background. I used a 40 weight Glide silver metallic thread to quilt on the snowflake design. This type of quilting gave me a lot of practice following a motif as well as looking ahead to the next snowflake so that I quilted continuously. I spent many more hours quilting that background than I would have thought! The
texture the quilting created was good and the density of the quilting is consistent throughout the piece.

I used the background fabric to face the quilt and construct the sleeve. I had fun with the label. Our leader of the book, Kathy M, provided an activity at our second meeting. We made a penguin out of felt scraps. She mailed us a little kit before the meeting. We didn't open the envelope so it was a surprise as to what we were going to do! The penguin could have been a finger puppet; but, I decided that I would use mine to be part of the label.

Finished front

In the book, Veronica had her second best red handbag pecked by a juvenile penguin. I had to include a handbag as part of the label. My granddaughters drew a variety of bags for me to choose one that would work. I ended up using K's envelope bag and J's bucket bag. They were psyched that I gave them credit on the label for their work. 

I was stuck figuring out how to add the felt penguin to the label. My friend, Connie P., suggested the speech bubble. I'm glad she suggested it as and I think the label turned out great! I spent about 74 hours creating this project. It measures 25 inches wide by 34 inches tall. I used about 2 3/4 yards of fabric. I have now used 8 1/4 yards from my stash this year.

This was goal #21 on my second quarter list. It was goal #2 on my June list. It was also my one monthly goal for June. I'm linking to Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal - June Finish Link-up. This finish was down to the wire! 

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