"Jumpers" pattern copyright 2007 by Jeffie Johnson

The dogs are all at Day School today so the cat and I have the house to ourselves. My tasks for the day were to sandwich and pin paste 2 quilts tops.

I got distracted.

The African Village quilt was such a big hit with my dog trainers that I got a commission to make another. I usually only want to make one copy of a quilt. But I wanted to make the African Village Quilt with the diamond variation. So this time I was happy to make another. The 2 other trainers who aren't getting a quilt looked crestfallen. I want to do something about for all of them because they have all been so great!

I decided to predominantly use real African batiks in my Diamond African Village. It turns out that while the fabrics are all designed in Africa, a lot of the production occurs in Holland. I went online and looked around. I finally decided to purchase my fabrics from the Tambo Collection on Etsy.com. I found a great selection of fabrics and also the appliqué pattern shown above.

One of the 4 dog trainers I work with has 4 daughters. I figured there has been a lot of jumping rope at his home over the years! So I decided to make it for him.

I cut it out yesterday and used Heat-n-Bond lite to fuse the pieces to the background fabric.

I struggle with reversing designs. I thought that since I was attaching the bonding material to the back of the fabric I was all set. Not so. My appliqué design is a mirror image of the pattern I purchased! Oops.

But I decided that it doesn't matter. The picture is just as cute and I didn't want to waste any of these special fabrics re-doing it.

Here's what I've done so far. It's still a WIP. The jump rope is quilting, using the #8 utilitarian stitch on my Bernina, with the width narrowed to 3. With the Sulky 12 wt variegated thread, it makes a fine jump rope!

I still need to come up with something for the fourth trainer who's particularly fond of my dog Taffy.