Sad Gallbladder Mini Quilt Tutorial

 So I've been working on a secret project for one of my best girlfriends who had to have her gallbladder removed this year. It's a replacement gallbladder, in adorable quilted cuteness! I made it up as I went along, so please excuse the tutorial being a little rough (it's also my first-ever tutorial).

Here's the finished project:

Here is the finished mini-quilt! I used an orange sherbert colored Fig Tree fabric for the background, a Kaffe Fassett Aboriginal Dots fabric for the borders, a scrap of green batik for the gallbladder, and some premade Moda binding (to make my life easier!).

First, I found a medical drawing/diagram of a gallbladder online, and drew off my own version of it (as close as possible to the original). I traced this onto freezer paper, and then ironed my freezer paper template onto the right side of the scrap of green batik fabric and backed that with steam-a-seam on the wrong side (I left the paper backing on one side, and let the other side stick to the fabric).

 Then cut it out, and stuck the fabric gallbladder (backed with steam-a-seam) to the background fabric. At this point, you can remove the freezer paper.

Iron down the gallbladder to the background fabric until the steam-a-seam sets.

This is the diagram I used for labeling the parts of the gallbladder. I programmed the name of each part into my machine, and then stitched it in eggplant purple thread. If your machine does not have a stitch alphabet, you could use a pencil to lightly write the words on the fabric and then stitch it by hand.

Programming in the words...

Stitching the words... make sure you give the machine plenty of room to stitch each word, it takes more room than you might think! Try to give too much space rather than too little, or you'll end up ripping out a lot of very tiny stitches (I speak from experience).

Here's the fully labeled piece. I used a decorative stitch to "draw" lines to the parts I was labeling.

I then used one strand of black floss to stitch a thin, sad little mouth, and make a pair of French knot eyes.

Here's another view from further away.

I then cut some 2 inch wide strips from the pink Kaffe Fassett Aboriginal Dots fabric, and stitched them onto the top and bottom of the main block.

Then trim off the excess fabric from the sides, and iron the seams toward the borders. Repeat with the side borders, stitching down, and pressing the seams toward the borders. Trim off any excess.

This is what the block looks like with the borders on.

Sandwich the quilt top with the batting and backing fabric, and use a zig-zag stitch to outline within the border. After this, I quilted the background with free-motion stitching, and quilted the border with straight lines every 1/4 inch.

I stitched down the binding with mitered corners, and finished it off with a simple straight stitch from the front. It would finish off nicer if you hand stitched it down to the back, but since this will just be hanging on the wall, and I have a lot of projects waiting in line to be completed, I used the machine.

The finished mini is super cute! The pictures don't really do it justice. I'll try to take some better ones in natural sunlight soon and put them on my flickr page. 

Be sure to comment and let me know if you use the tutorial, I'd love to see how yours turns out!

If you have any problems with the tutorial let me know and I'll try to help!

Comments

[Mike and Angela Pingel]

I'm sure that your friend will love this! So sweet of you to make a replacement for her. :)

[Djam1029]

HaHaHa! Too cute!!! So original too. I can see the start of a whole line of body parts! lol

[StarSparrow]

Thanks!!! I hope she enjoys it. It doesn't preform some of the basic gallbladder functions, such as... whatever it is that gallbladders do. However, unlike the non-quilted kind, it is cute! :)

[Tacey B]

I loved the tutorial. It is easy to read and follow. What a great idea! I just might have to check if any of my friends are having surgery in the near future :)

[StarSparrow]

I'm glad you enjoyed it Tacey! Hopefully none of your friends are having surgery (that's never fun!), but if they are, I hope that you are able to make something to bring a smile to their face.