My mom’s nephew is having his first baby in February and she wanted to make him a baby quilt. She found an inspiration quilt online and figured out the block sizes. We used a coloring page for the whale, and the rest of the sea creatures came from Shiny Happy World (Wendi Gratz) patterns. I did a bunch of math to figure out how to scale up the patterns to make them the right size for the blocks. We did some minor tweaks to some of them to make them more closely match the inspiration quilt. The inspiration quilt only had an octopus with 4 legs, but I insisted on one with 8, and Wendi Gratz’s Oswin the Octopus pattern fit the bill.
The blocks are all machine appliqued using the applique stitch, and we ended up making a quilt sandwich (with a random piece of cotton fabric for the backing) so the applique would serve as the quilting. It was a bit of a challenge to wrangle the quilt through the machine, but I got the job done!
Then, I embroidered the faces, did some stitch in the ditch to secure the backing fabric, and added the binding. We started on Monday (the day after Christmas), and finished at 9 pm on New Year’s Eve! Whew! A marathon quilting session, but the end result is so worth it!
Close ups of the blocks (plus the backing fabric… I bought extra to make PJ pants).
Thank you! I really love how it turned out, even though it was a lot of work. My mom originally planned to make the octopus and the whale gray, but after we printed to octopus template on green paper, it looked so much nicer when we put it down on the blue background. So, even though it won’t exactly match the color scheme in the baby’s room, the colors are so much more fun!
And, we saw the backing fabric on Monday, but my mom couldn’t remember what the size of the finished quilt would be, so we didn’t know how much to get. I was worried that it would be gone when we went back to get it a few days later. Fortunately, there was enough for the quilt back and my future PJ pants
You really made this your own! I agree, the octopus has to have eight legs. I like the way it breaks the block its in.
Super cute quilt, and i love that back fabric.
Your quilt is SOOO adorable! And of COURSE the octopus had to have eight legs. Don’t want to be misinforming kids about the important features of sea life! Love the backing fabric, too. Will make some fun PJs.
And @Mvanrh11, that fish does remind me of the Rainbow Fish from the book, now that you mention it!
@saintcady, @gozer, and @endymion, as a science teacher, I just couldn’t have only 4 legs. Definitely can’t have the baby growing up not knowing that an octopus has 8 legs!
Congratulations! Your lovely Under the Sea Baby Quilt is a Featured Project! 