5.27.2009

Rissa's Quilt





I made this quilt for a friend who just had a baby and wanted the baby's theme to be pirates. The finished size is roughly 45"x55". I believe in big baby quilts.

The first fabric I found for this quilt was the blue pirate print, most visible on the outer border in this picture. It was flannel, and while I hadn't set out to make a flannel quilt, the print was perfect. There didn't seem to be many options in cotton pirates, so flannel pirates it was!






Each block is a little ship. The aqua fish print in the lower left corner is the water, the red stripe is the ship's hull, and the upper two triangles make up the sails. The blue pirate print sail is the fabric I first found for this quilt.


I machine quilted a skull and crossbones design into each block to give individual blocks more attention. Looking at the whole quilt, the red begs for attention so I wanted to put more focus into each ship block. An overall quilting motif would have blended the blocks into each other even more.



The skull and crossbones quilting is also visible here towards the left. The black print is the back of the quilt with my label in the corner. I embroidered the label by hand.

I machine pieced and quilted this so it could withstand going through the wash often.

Having made this following my huge king-sized quilt, it seemed to go quickly. Of course, this is only about a quarter of the size of the bed quilt. I cut out the pieces in late February but prom season interrupted all sewing-for-fun plans. I pieced, assembled, quilted, and bound the quilt in just a couple of days once I had most of the prom dresses finished and out of the house. I mailed it the day before the baby was born, which is good timing considering most of the quilters I know have baby quilts still in progress for babies turning 2 or 3 years old.
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