Penny's Quilt + Blogger's Quilt Festival

I have a quilt to share with everyone today that I'm really excited about.

You could even say that this quilt was 9 months in the making..... but not really.

Here it is..... Penny's quilt



This is the quilt I made my daughter Penelope.  It's definitely the showcase of her woodlands-themed nursery and everything else in the nursery evolves around it.  This is my baby quilt entry for the Fall 2013 Blogger's Quilt Festival.



I love the colors.  SO bright and fun without reading either "boy" or "girl".  The fabric inspiration was the "Fox Hollow" line by Monaluna (which I used in the border and the centers of the dresdens),  paired with five different more basic prints.


For the pattern I was inspired by this quilt by Melissa of Polka Dot Chair, but I wanted the border to be a little more fun and show off the different prints in the Fox Hollow line, and I wanted to frame the quilt a little more so I added in the gingham piping between the center panel of the quilt and the border.  It gives the quilt such fun dimension.



I chose the fabric placement for the centers of the dresdens very purposefully.  The center of the large dresden has a frog under a flower because Penny's daddy's nickname as a child was "Toad".  The smallest dresden has a little gnome poking out of his stump house because gnomes are mommy's favorite.  The mid-sized dresden has a momma fox being followed by her two babies, with a papa fox watching, because the fox family reminds me of our family (though of course we only have one child so far).




For the quilting, I didn't want to distract too much from the quilt top, but I did want to add a lot of free motion quilting, so I did things a little differently.... I had two layers of batting and quilted the top and back separately.  It gives the quilt a heavier weight, but since I was using fairly thin cotton batting it worked out well.  On the quilt top there's quilting around each square in the border and each spike in the dresdens.  I used the blanket stitch on my sewing machine.  The look it gives each dresden plate is fantastic.



The back is quilted in an allover design with flowers.  It was quite fun to do once I got the hang of it. Once I had the back and front quilted individually I did some quilting that tied the whole quilt together.



I love it and I hope it's something Penny can treasure when she's older. She was kind of cranky when I was taking these photos so she's not in any of them, but I hope to get a shot or two of her on the quilt tomorrow to share with everyone.

edited 10/25/13: The photoshoot was well worth the wait.  While I had 200+ mediocre photos of a blurry baby, all the shots were worth it to get this one perfect shot of my little girl.



 She's still a little blurry and the quilt is slightly out of focus, but that smile is to die for.  (And yes, she's wearing the little mini dirndl I made her for Halloween, but I'll post about that in a few days).

Quilt Stats:
Pattern: Loosely adapted from this pattern by Melissa of Polka Dot Chair
Fabrics: Various Fox Hollow by Monaluna prints + basics in red, green, and blue
Quilted: By me on my home machine
Dimensions: 36" x 46"
Completed: March 2013

Thanks for looking, and please think of Penny's quilt (and my baby's perfect little smile) when it comes time to nominate your favorite baby quilt!

To check out my 2012 entry in the Blogger's Quilt Festival that took "favorite hand quilted quilt" check out this post.