The Yellow Daisy Festival Online Market begins on Tuesday, Sept 8th. In anticipation of this, I’m making some posts about the quilts I have ready to go. Each day I’ll feature two or three quilts and tell about their process and what I like most about them. These and other quilts can be found in the Quest Quilts shop on this website or in my Etsy shop.
These quilts were made originally just to be children’s quilts, but as I finished up I realized there was enough fabric left over to make a smaller version for a doll or teddy bear. It was a lot of fun trying to make sure I had the proportions correctly scaled down so it would look like a convincing miniature. I’ll admit I’m very proud of the way these turned out.
The llama set came when I bought some llama fabric on a whim at a Black Friday sale. As I was looking it over, I really wanted a pattern that would do it justice. One of my favorite things to do when making these ready-made quilts is to experiment. I tried a pattern I’d been meaning to try for ages – the disappearing 9-patch. It’s a neat pattern that can give a quilt a busy and whimsical feel, and I felt that it would compliment the llama and cactus fabric perfectly. Scaling it down for a mini-quilt was a fun challenge, and I think I nailed it.
The dinosaur fabric was bought at the same time as the llama fabric if memory serves correctly. I really liked the colors and detail in this fabric, and I couldn’t figure out a way to cut it to where the pattern was emphasized. I’d run in to this problem once before, so I decided to do the same style. I went with long horizontal cuts and set them off with a mixture of colors and widths to make sure it wasn’t too tidy-looking. The other fabric is dinosaur footprints, and I decided to use it as a sort of buffer for that middle section, giving the pattern a nice visual stratification. I actually had fun scaling the little color strips down for the mini-quilt.
When I made these, I was envisioning some child toting it around and tucking in a doll, teddy bear, or other stuffed animal beside them at nap time. They’re meant to be used and loved and are easily washed on cold and dried on medium in your own home.
Quest Quilts 