Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Zachary's Quilt

I was cleaning up my room after watching the Hoarders marathon yesterday, and found my sketch pad still out in a stack of papers on top of our scanner. I had been meaning to post about my latest (and by latest, I mean last year's) quilting adventure and still hadn't done it.

The first "quilt" I ever made was for my baby girl. I was determined to sew each square by hand, and I did. Right now that quilt sits folded in my daughter's closet, shredding at multiple seams. So much for a cherished heirloom.
Dang it.

When I attempted Zachary's quilt, I planned on using my sewing machine. I was also determined not to do all squares. I had been saving this adorable dinosaur fabric since before Zack was even a twinkle in my eye. I wanted to incorporate more triangles in his quilt. Dinosaur scales, triangles, it makes sense to me. Anyway, I searched the internet for "dinosaur quilts" and "geometric quilt patterns" but never found anything I really thought would work for me and my novice sewing abilities. So, I pulled out a pad of graph paper and got sketching. This is what I ended up with:


I also ended up finding a second dinosaur flannel online. The fabric is actually titled, "Sporty Reptiles", but some of them look like dinosaurs. I paired it with my saved dino fabric, some textured greens, a polka dot orange flannel, and a yellow flannel. I cut all of the pieces with pinking shears and prayed that my sewing machine's stitches would hold up better than my own. A lot of the corners don't meet up, some of the fabric was more elastic than I had realized; and the over all "look" ended up being a little more colorful than I thought, but c'est la vive. I'm very new at this.


I have no idea what a professional quilter would think of this. I'm sure I don't adequately understand the idea of color theory in the world of quilting. But in the end, I'm happy with how it turned out. It now hangs over the back of Zack's crib and he chews on the satin binding quite frequently.

Hopefully, a year from now, it won't be shredding at the seams and stuck away in the closet like poor Katie's quilt.