So Soft Doggie Quilt

It's finished! It's even in the mail. Here is a project that I thought I could whip out quickly because it was simple. My friend Carissa is so inspirational, and has shared her incredible talent for quilting with so many of us in Omaha. She introduced me to the idea of the strip quilt. Since I absolutely love stripes, I became very excited to try one out. "Why not do two at once?" I reasoned with myself. So in January, I cut out the strips for a quilt for my nephew Elijah and the other strips for my baby Nicholas. You can see that I really tried to follow the pattern of the fabric, so my quilting stitches are very intricate. I probably don't need to have the design so close together next time. But I had battles with my old sewing machine for two months trying to do the quilting before I gave up on it. My old Singer was a good starter machine, but certainly was not built for free-motion quilting. (Which is probably a big reason why I quilt, I love to come up with the designs my stitches make. It's like drawing in stitches!) And so enter the Baby Lock Elluré ESL. It was sleek and beautiful with a pearlized shell and sewed like a dream. Sort of. I thought maybe it had a learning curve, but after constantly breaking thread and tension issues, my sewing machine repair shop found an issue with the needle hitting the casing around the bobbin case. (That's what I get for buying it second hand, it needed some TLC.) So lots of money and four months of sewing machine issues later, I am set!

Nicholas at least got to enjoy this while I was working on it. Once quilted, it did take me a while to hand stitch the binding to the back. In fact, I put it down for a whole month and saved it for our drive to Maryland. It was the perfect road trip project!

I absolutely love the color scheme and tying in the doggie elements. I based the colors off of the main patterned fabics I found at Hobby Lobby. The doggie print fabrics tied in nicely, along with the tactile fabrics. The 2 kinds of soft furs add such a fun and unique element, and with all the other textures (minkie, corduroy, butter fleece, fleece,) and the texture the quilting makes, it is perfect for any toddler to love. I really hope Elijah loves it, and I can't wait to finish Nicholas's now!

I have started my next project, a patriotic quilt, and am whipping it up super fast because I am so excited to see how it turns out. Oh yeah, and maybe I'm excited because it's the first quilt I am making for myself to keep!