Growth Charts

I made my first trip to a quilt shop here in Sydney a few weeks ago.  I've been trying without luck to upload some photos to blog about it, but haven't had much luck.  Hopefully third time's the charm (right now).

I found some fat quarters of kitty cat fabric that I simply adore and had to buy with no plan of what to do with it yet.  Here it is:

Cute, right?  Anyhoo, while I was at the shop I saw a pattern book with plans for all sorts of kid's stuff. Included in the book was a pattern for a growth chart.  The shop I was in had the growth chart featured and the fabric panels were available for girls and boys.  I have two young nieces.  Thankfully, there was corresponding fabric in both red and teal.  Both were acceptable for girls and I loved them both.  Here's my progress so far:

This is the project book with the fabric I bought.

One of the growth charts is going to be mainly red.

The other will be mainly teal.

Making these for my nieces was practically written in the stars.
The eldest is Riley and her sister's name is Abigail.  We call her Abbi.

Here I've finished attaching the borders.

Closer up.

The next step is to make a copy of the letters from the book.
Then you cut out the letters.  You want to make copies from the book so
that you always have the letters for future projects.

Take the letters you cut out and trace them onto your fusible web.
Fusible web is used to permanently attach two fabrics together.
It's very useful for appliqué projects.

At first I wanted the letters made out of this fabric with the squared circles,
but realized that you couldn't read the letters from a distance easily so I redid them.

I decided to use the same fabric as the border so that the names really popped.

I stitched around the edges of the letters just to be sure they didn't fray.

So I'm not finished yet.  I still have to fuse the front and back to a stiff stabilizing interfacing and then bind them both.  Stay tuned...