Texture!

Once again there's been a pregnancy in my orbit, so of course I had to make another quilt!  This time it's a baby sister for a very rambunctious boy who's room theme was safari animals, so I went with a sort-of-matching theme for her quilt.  Instead of piecing, this time, I used a pre-printed panel and quilted the bejabbers out of it, mostly in the background so the animals stay puffy and cuddly.

I use needled cotton batting, usually Warm & Natural or Fairfield, which can be quilted up to 10" apart.  The animals are done in outline (including the curves of the elephant's headdress, the giraffe's hex-spots, and the zebra's stripes), with heavy stitching in all the background areas. 

The fabric background was pre-printed with the echo-stitching pattern around the background trees, so it was fairly easy to free-motion on the dotted lines, as it were.  The result is a 30"x40" quilt that won't be terribly warm (except maybe under the elephant), but is wonderfully textured.

And as much as I wanted to keep it for myself, it is going off to a good home!