Project Quilting 15.3 - Inside Out

Thanks to my daughter, I knew what the title of my project for PQ 15.3 was going to be on Sunday afternoon.  It just took me awhile to decide what form the project was going to take.

As I was reading the blog post about the theme, my daughter walked into the room.  Now, in order to understand why that is important,  you have to realize that my daughter is a pop culture nerd.  More specifically, she is a Disney nerd.  

I was scratching my head and trying to figure out how I could make something quilted that was inside out.  Batting on the outside?  Seams on the outside?  Neither seemed to be a great idea for a quilt.  So I read the post to my daughter and she said - Oh, that's easy!  Memory Balls!    

Huh? Memory Balls?  What the heck are Memory Balls?  She reminded me about the Disney Pixar film from a few years ago called Inside Out. I remembered the film, but I had never seen it. So of course, I had to look it up. The film is about a little girl who moves to a new city and a new school. Her personified emotions are color coded in the film, and so are her memories, which are stored as colored balls in a place in her brain called Long Term Memory. The color of the balls is reflective of the emotion associated with it.  Yellow is joy, blue is sadness, green is disgust, purple is fear and red is anger.

One of the characters in the film in Long Term Memory
 with the Memory Balls  

So I knew right away that I was going to do something with colored circles in a grid.  I thought about using the Drunkard's Path block to make colored circles for a baby quilt, but I wasn't sure that I would have enough time to get it done. 

I settled on appliqued circles to represent the Memory Balls.  I'm not a big fan of applique, but I thought that it would be easier than doing curved piecing.   I heard about an applique technique that uses fusible interfacing to make the turned under edges, so I thought that I'd try it.  The one thing about these challenges is that they encourage me to try new techniques!  

The fusible interfacing technique involves sewing the fusible side of the interfacing and the right side of the fabric together all along the edge of the shape. Then you cut out the shape with a small seam allowance, slit the interfacing and turn it right side out.  That means that the right side of the fabric and the fusible side of the interfacing are now on the outside.  You iron the applique in place, then stitch around the edges however you want.  

I made a bunch of circles using solid fabrics and fusible interfacing, then arranged them in a grid on a solid navy blue background.  I chose to use the blanket stitch on my machine.  Note to self - you need more practice with machine blanket stitching!

And since I was playing with new techniques, I decide to try using the alphabet stitches that are built in to my Bernina B590.  I programmed in the phrase "Long-Term Memories" and proceeded to stitch that phrase around the outside of the grid of circles.  Another note to self - don't try to go too fast.  The letters get misshapen if you pull the fabric or if you try to stitch too fast.

My Inside Out knitting bag

I ended up making an 8 X 11 inch zippered bag for my knitting. So not only was the project inspired by the movie Inside Out, I also used two inside out techniques - the fusible interfacing applique and the bag both needed to be turned inside out in order to finish them.  WooHoo - a three-fer!