This isn't the quilt project I made this blog for but it feels like a good practice project to play with.
This is Sari's Quilt Kit from American Girl's Kirsten collection. These kits make a small quilt meant for a 4" ragdoll, and were marketed to children ages 8-12. It was originally introduced in 1987 and it has been retired since 2009; finding one that has not been completed and has all the parts intact is difficult. I found this one (tagged 1993) on eBay and it arrived this week. It was only missing the needle, but I have plenty of hand-sewing needles.
Right away you can tell the person who developed this kit was not a quilter. The instructions leave quite a bit to be desired.
The hearts are simply cut, no extra fabric to fold over the edges and press to keep them from fraying.
I wanted to Follow The Directions, so I did go against my better judgment and tried to stitch the first heart on without doing any of the prep work that experience has taught me is needed, and it frayed and pulled off the quilt after four stitches. So the next step was to put fray check on all three hearts, and then clip 1/8" into the curves and fold the edges in. So far this is much more work than an average inexperienced nine year old would have been able to do without a more experienced adult to help.
I split the pink embroidery floss into individual strands, threaded two strands onto my smallest needle, and stitched the hearts on with a blanket stitch, which luckily I know how to do because the one little picture in the instructions wouldn't have helped me if I didn't have any embroidery experience. The hoop got in my way so I took it off.
I opted to put the doll's initials instead of mine, and the year 1855 because the story this quilt was made in is set in that year.
When I finished the appliqués and initials, I fixed the obvious closure seam because it was bothering me.
Then I went a step farther than the directions and *actually quilted* it, using single strands of the remaining pink thread to stitch around the edges of all the appliqués and squares, as well as adding hearts to the border. I did run out of the supplies thread but I had a matching pink in my stash.
Every square is quilted, but the print on a few of them is busy or light-colored and the stitching is hard to see! If I had it to do over again I probably would have chosen a darker pink.
It doesn't have any batting - I considered adding a little square of felt "batting" but that felt like a lot more work on a tiny quilt for a doll. So it can be a summer coverlet.
