The Evolution of a Fancy Forest Baby Quilt Part 2

In my last post I told you that I made an entire quilt before I decided I just couldn't give it to a friend having a baby. So less than one week before her baby shower I started making a quilt using Elizabeth Hartman's Fancy Forest Pattern

Of course there was absolutely no time to order fabric... So I started rummaging through my stash. I kept coming back to a fat quarter bundle of Persimmon by Basic Grey for Moda.




I purchased a complete fat quarter bundle well over a year ago when I just fell in love with the colors. I used it to make a few quilt blocks earlier in the year using Camille Roskelley's Mini Swoon Pattern and lets just say that it was a lot of little pieces! I loved how they turned out, but I got busy and didn't finish it or do anything with it.

I kept thinking the fabric wouldn't work for the Fancy Forest critters because there was not a lot of variation in the volume and some of the prints are rather busy. I decided to give it a try; I made a hedgehog and a fox... and they turned out fairly well.

I made the firefly along with 4 foxes and 2 hedgehogs. 

 I used Robert Kaufman Essex Linen for the gray background of each critter. I had a small fat quarter bundle of that, and I am not even sure the actual colors that I used. Of course by the end of I was stitching together small scraps of the background just trying to make it work.

I made three rows, the top and bottom each with 2 foxes and a hedgehog and put the firefly in the center separated by sashing.

I backed the quilt with a large scrap of brown minky, which I am not even sure which project that brown minky came from, but definitely not my favorite brand... It was a bit on the thin side. I used a 100% natural cotton batting.

I stitched in the ditch around the "critters" and boxes/borders so that the outlines showed up in the minky.

I used a scrappy binding with strips of Persimmon. I did have to machine bind the quilt due to lack of time, which not my favorite thing to do. I love hand binding quilts, it's one of my favorite things to do!

Even though it was a rather rushed quilt, and not what I would consider the perfect fabric, I love the way it turned out and I think the mama and daddy to be did too!

I look forward to making the other little critters in the pattern in the future. I have never used any of Elizabeth Hartman's patterns and I really loved the way I was able to make the critters with simple straight and diagonal lines. No paper piecing necessary, although I do love paper piecing, this went much faster.

- Jessica

The Evolution of a Fancy Forest Baby Quilt Part 1

Finally something new to share on the blog! It's been a long time. I have made some small projects here and there over the past year, but they have been rushed and with limited time I haven't written about them.

At the end of this Summer a new baby boy is due, not mine, but that of a close friend, and of course a quilt is in order. I waited with great anticipation until the day they announced the gender; a baby boy!

Promptly I searched the internet for fabric, and while I found several options I really liked, decided I really should take a look at my stash and see if I already had something that would be nice.

I came up with the following:

Urban Mod by Art Gallery Fabrics

Leftovers from my Philippians 4:8 Wall Hanging

Dr Seuss Fabric with Riley Blake Chevron

Leftovers from a baby quilt back in 2014 and Matias' First Birthday

I let my boys decide which fabric to use and they quickly selected the Dr. Seuss Fabric because they said the other fabric was too girly. I thought the geometric patterns with blues, grays, and mustard were masculine, but they disagreed. 

I found the following tutorial from Sew Mama Sew and decided I would make some pinwheels with my fabric. 

Some of my pinwheels:

 I then sashed them with white fabric. I really wanted to use the elephant portion of the fabric too, so I separated the sets of pinwheels with a wide strip of that. Once I started putting it all together I realized that I had a really long and narrow quilt so I needed to add some fabric to the sides to add width. By the time I put it together I had a twin sized quilt rather than a baby quilt.

I backed it with a beautiful aqua minky dot from Hawthorne Threads. I love their minky , it is the best minky  I have ever used. It is so soft and a little thicker than typical minky in my opinon. I did not use batting because I wanted the quilt to be light weight. It worked out pretty well, I have never done that before. You can see the "dots" of the minky dot on the front side of the quilt. In real life it isn't really noticeable, but in the pictures it makes the quilt look very wrinkled. 

I quilted it with a "stitch in the ditch" following the pinwheel on the front, so it made the pinwheel image into the minky. I really like how that turned out. 

I bound it with a red and white polka dot fabric. 

I had just about finished the binding, one week before the baby shower, when I decided that this wasn't the quilt for my friend and her baby boy!

It's a cute quilt, but it just wasn't the right quilt. I saw the pattern, Fancy Forest by Elizabeth Hartman online and I just knew that I had to do something with these adorable 'forest friends'. I just couldn't resist!



I knew there was no way that I could make the whole quilt, but I had to do something with at least some of the woodland critters... So I had less than one week to make a new quilt, using this pattern, challenge accepted! Or I have serious mental issues, either way I was determined to make some of those little critters into a quilt.

Keep an eye out for my next blog post to see if I managed to get a Fancy Forest Quilt made in less than a week!

- Jessica