Play Quilt

a.k.a. peekaboo-textures-colors quilt

a.k.a. sensory overload

This is one of those quilts that I am incredibly happy with the final product, but I really hated making it and could not wait for it to be done! It started when I saw the peekaboo quilt that Anna Maria Horner has in her newest book Handmade Beginnings. I really liked the idea of the flaps that lift up to reveal something and decided I could make something similar but instead of just a color pattern under the flap, I thought felt animals would be nice. and then I decided that instead of just using two different versions of the same color for each block, I could make them each have a textured square so the red has a minky square, purple has velour, pink has terry cloth, green has satin, yellow has fleece, etc. And so I set about making it.

The blocks are 14" squares with a 6" center square. The animals were printed off the computer and traced onto some sewable heat and bond which I ironed on and then did some nice chunky stitches with embroidery floss. I like it a lot actually, it looks really cool. I made the mistake of using a poly/cotton blend for my solids, mostly because they were cheap and I figured they would be less likely to wrinkle which is true, but it just didn't sew up as nicely. And of course many of the textured fabrics were stretchy and a pain to work with so that wasn't fantastic...


[the white one is a bunny in case you can't see it]


The back and binding is Michael Miller Loli Dots which is seriously just perfect. It really makes it. I decided to try something different since the quilt is pretty small and wrap the backing around to make the binding and machine stitch it down and it came out really well. I think I like the stability of that for a play quilt that. To be honest, I am hoping it survives the wash since I think it will need to be washed many times, but we'll see. All the fabrics are pre-washed so that should help (and yes, I absolutely made sure that all the different types of fabric were washable before I bought them).



Overall I am really happy with how this turned out and I can't wait until the wee one is big enough to really appreciate it and play with it!