Twin Tales - II

I got a commission to make quilts for TWIN babies! Out of all the baby quilts I have made (109 to date), this is only the second time I've had such a request (the previous was in 2016). 

The original specs were for a beach theme (if possible), for example with palm trees, seashells, starfish, etc. for both, with a dolphin for the boy’s and a flamingo for the girl’s.  

I went to my go-to place for things like that, Counted Quilts, and, believe it or not, I was able to find patterns with those animals!  However, the flamingo one turned out not to be "ocean" enough, so they asked me to look for a mermaid instead. Bingo!  Found one of those there too! 

So this post will be all about the dolphin pattern; "Twin Tales - I" will cover the mermaid. 

We went through my fabric stash and were able to find great fabs, but we also thought it would be good to use the same "water" fabric in both. Alas....we either found one we liked but didn't have enough, or nixed the ones where there was enough for both. So that required a trip to the local quilt store. 

The way this pattern is designed, there is the one full-sized dolphin (leaping out of the water) and another quarter dolphin somehow floating on (above?) the water poking in from the right side. We thought that second partial dolphin looked more like a giant snake head, and just did not work. So we modified the pattern to take it out and added in more foamy water "drops".  

         

We also wanted to use the same fabric on the backs of both quilts, and wanted that to have an "ocean" theme. It would have been great to use one with mermaid and dolphins on it, but we were not able to find anything like that. So we got one with fish, octopuses, crabs, and other assorted ocean creatures. 

The quilting for this one was mostly done with thread colors that matched the fabric. I did a mix of free-motion swirls and some straight line "decorative" stitching on the dolphin's body. The waves on this one really ARE top-of-the-water waves, so they run left to right.  The one exception to matching colors was that I used dark monofilament and sewed in the ditch around the dolphin's entire body, from head to tail.  

And, speaking of the tail...thus the quilt names.  The creatures in both have tails, and the journeys and experiences these quilts have with Meadow and Jake will be part of their Twin Tales!