Panels From Coloring Books

 You can purchase panels to make quilts, but I decided to make my own panels. I found giant coloring books at Dollar Tree - perfect starting point. Next I traced the pictures on white muslin and then I colored them in. I used crayon on some - when you iron to set the colors, there can be a lot of wax residue so be sure to sandwich your picture between paper towels. Crayon also has a tendency to bleed over the lines. On others I used permanent markers - these markers are alcohol based and their colors can also be set by a hot, dry iron. One other method of coloring these panels that gave  the brightest colors was acrylic paints thinned with fabric medium.

I called this my Kitten Series. Once I had several panels created, I set two (so far) into quilts.

This panel was done with crayon.

This one I decided to frame with some green fabric. The background fabric is actually from some pillowcases I picked up at a thrift store.

 I built an outer border using half-square triangles in a random zig-zag pattern.

 Then the next border was a pale pink. The quilting was done with a walking foot except for some Free Motion when the curves got a little tight. Final size is 49"x41".

Another panel I used was this grey kitten with bright flowers done with crayon.

I made I-spy blocks (the technique used to make these blocks cuts off your points so it's not a true "square-in-a-square") from various calico 5"charms that I had in my stash.

  I realized after making this quilt that I should have done a better job of contrasting colors.

  This quilting is also done with a walking foot. Final size: 38"x38.5".