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