Quilt for Alice

It sure has been a while since I updated this blog. Whoops. But to break the drought I wanted to let you know how proud I am of my number 2 son who has just completed and delivered his second quilt, "Alice's Peeps".

 This quilt was made for the 3 yr old daughter of a workmate. Some many months ago Alice graduated from her crib into a big girl bed so it was decided a quilt would be an appropriate way to mark that transition. Again, a foundation paper-pieced pattern was used (the hen, rooster and chick from "A Quilters Ark" by Margaret Rolfe) for the chickens but the overall pattern layout/setting was designed by my son. In the lowest row he was inspired by the book "Word Play Quilts" by Tonya Ricucci in creating the letters to spell out the name of the quilt.

 The chicks were arranged randomly but he wanted to have one chick asleep (see purple chick above).

 We had lots of fun visiting the fabric shops to find chicken themed fabric but most of the rest of the fabrics came from my stash. Note the chicken foot quilting pattern on the scribble border.

 The plan was for each row to be colored a different fun color while blue would be a constant background color. In addition to the paper pieceing there was the challenge of hand embroidering the beaks, eyes and feet. For the combs and wattles it was decided to use a red wool fabric.

 Check out the chicken wire quilting. The quilt was longarm quilted by Jenny Eccleston with input from son and I.

 I do admit that I was drafted to do the binding. We had used more fabric than was initially anticipated on the back and what we wanted to use for the binding had to be augmented. The suggestion was floated to make it scrappy and insert some of the colorful fabrics that were used to make the hens, roosters and chicks. Since this is for a 3 yr old's bed the binding needed to be robust so it was machined on on the back side first, turned it to the front and then buttonhole stitched it down, choosing red thread to repeat the color of the combs and wattles.

 Chicks roamed freely all over the lowest name row. The blackberry fabric was deliberately chosen because that fruit is a favorite treat for Alice.

We happened across this wonderful rooster fabric in the quilt shop markdown bin and couldn't resist buying it for the backing.

Work has commenced on the third quilt and ideas are forming for a fourth.The first two quilts were for firstborn girls and now each girl is soon to have a baby brother.

That first quilt, featuring sheep, made a short appearance on this blog on October 28, 2015.

This  one, Alice's Peeps, turned out to be a great quilt don't you think?