When Kelli and I spoke at the NE Iowa Quilt Guild show on the 15th there were vendors there. Of course we couldn’t pass up a chance to shop. I bought several things. One thing I’ll tell you about today. The rest I’ll tell you about in an upcoming Stash Report post.
One of the vendors was Debbie’s Quilt Shop in Osage Iowa. You can find her page on Facebook here. She had the cutest little sock monkey quilt. Our daughter Kayla loves sock monkeys and I love them too. I thought to buy a kit for Kayla should they decide to have kids then thought nope…I am buying TWO kits. They were so cute and I needed a baby gift for my new little baby boy that was born to one of my childcare families.
I’m not really good at sewing minke…and not really good at following directions so even though this little kit looks easy, it’s not for me.
I read through the directions right away after I got it and thought yuck. I set them aside. Then our daughter Kayla came home this weekend and I decided that I’d make the quilt and she could be here to help me make sense of the directions.
Here we are working on it.The directions don’t specify it but the project is a “quilt as you go” type project. Thankfully they had an on line link that showed decent picture directions.
I now have the top all done and the binding tacked down….next up I need to sew it down. UGH. I’m not looking forward to sewing on that slippery stuff….
Yes, and remember it was minke? Well now I have to vacuum the whole area I was working in.
To see what others are working on check out Patchwork Times.
I have a friend who loves minky and uses it on all her crib quilts. I HATE minky and won’t sew with it at all. Good luck with the binding. Blessings, Gretchen
I love the “sock monkey” fabrics and have some in my collection to use one day. I love going into Debbie’s quilt shop when I visit my mom who lives in Osage. She carries such a nice collection of Tractor, farm scenes and lots of animal fabrics plus her selection of Civil War fabrics is quite nice. I think your turned out really cute and I’m sure the parents are going to love how soft and cute it turned out.
Put it on your long arm. My mid-arm goes through Minkie like butter! I now use it all the time on baby quilts! (Hope I didn’t just jinx myself!! Sheesh!)
All my friends who have longarm machines love minky. They use it all the time. For those of us using traditional home machines, it’s awful. It reminds me of a snake, slithering all over the place! haha… They are wonderfully soft and snuggly when you get done though, so I just suffer through. Not by choice usually, but anyway… Enjoy!!
I sew displays for our local quilt shop and we use minky all the time. The trick is to pin, pin, pin and use a walking foot. I also found that making my stitch length a little bigger helps too. Also, since minky is a polyester product you should use poly batting with it.
JO!
Minkie is a dirty job –but — here is a trick I learned. Once you have the pieces cut out
move it around as little as possible, take the pieces to the dryer & run a fluff cycle.
You will contain your mess to your dryer, and have to clean the lint trap, but wow does it save on the sewing room & rest of the house being decorated with fluff.
Try it on the next one!
I have only used it on a quilt back with the long arm and it wasn’t bad to work with, but I haven’t ever sewn with it. But I saved the scraps from the back to maybe make a quilt with. . .hmmm, wonder where those are???
I was commissioned once (I was and still am a beginner) to make a kinder nap blanket using Minkie. NEVER EVER again! To me the 1st cut into the Minkie was like blowing into a handfull of little snippets of Cottonwood Tree cotton fibers. UGH. I was forever vacuuming that stuff up. I truly look up to the people who enjoy working with the stuff. They are a talented group of people for sure.
Jeri Oldtisme@aol.com
However…..if you know of a place where I can buy a kit to make my very own Real Sock Monkey, with the original brown socks etc, I would love to make one for myself. It brings back such great memories of my youth as well as my daughter’s youth (my mother also made one for my daughter) . I bought one at an Estate Sale but he had such a terrible smell that was impossible to get rid of I had to toss him