Wednesday, August 22, 2012

New Commission - Baby Boy Quilt and Block

The commission was for a baby playmat about a metre square with a panel that has the baby's name and birthdate on it and a soft toy block with ribbon tags - everything else was up to me, i.e. colour, design, applique, layout, etc. And here's what I came up with:


The name panel was stitched by hand with embroidery floss...


...and the puppy dog, tow truck and robot panels use raw edge applique for securing the fabric and for detailing, along with trapunto for texture.




The robot might look familiar as the design is from Don't Look Now's Robot Riot quilt

 

As I had free reign on the design of the quilt I wanted to make the back a bit interesting so I slightly modified the layout of the Modern Pickle Relish design from Modern Quilt Relish to suit a small square quilt.


I quilted all over with a medium density meandering loop pattern in variegated blue rayon thread on the coloured blocks...


...and more densely with random stars on the white background fabrics of the feature applique blocks and the white border using a white rayon thread.



The soft toy block only had to have the ribbon tags for bubs to play, again anything else was up to me so I ran with it and appliqued shapes onto two sides of the block. The dinosaur has overlapping crinkly spiky spines for bubs to grab onto...



...while the kite is made of felt secured with satin stitch and its tail is made of ribbon bows, again to add texture to tempt little fingers.


I was absolutely staggered at how this quilt was received by not only my client but also the baby's parents and anyone else who has seen the quilt and block in person or even simply pictures of them. Thankyou so much Leah for not only asking me to make this quilt but also for having such absolute trust in me that you let me just run with any design ideas I had to produce this, a gift to treasure.