This is the second time I have been asked to make quilts for twins. This time it is for Leo and Luke. And these are the FOURTH and FIFTH quilts I have made for the same family!!! The previous ones were Sebastian's Ark, Go, Chicago!, and Take the "B" Train.
Mom Jackie was pretty specific in her request. She wanted one to have sea animals, and the other to have dinosaurs. So we began looking for possible patterns. While doing so I happened to go to my local quilt store and....there on the wall was a sample quilt that had a colorful variety of animals swimming in the sea!!! I snapped a pic, sent it to Jackie and she loved it! It is Elizabeth Hartman's Awesome Ocean pattern. Actually, the sample I saw in the store was a modified version of the pattern, and then I tweaked it even further to meet Jackie's specifications. Here is my version:
It is made with the same squares-rectangles sew-and-flip technique that I have used many times. The quilting was ditch around the borders and sashing, and free motion blue waves on the background. There is no quilting on the critters themselves, so they pop out.
The selection of the pattern for the dino quilt was a lot more difficult. Eventually we found this pattern from one of my favorite go-to places, Counted Quilts (because it used the same technique). But even then we had to go around and around. The pattern is actually for 5 dinosaur pillow cases. So the shape of each finished "block" (21" x 28") was an odd one for a standard quilt top. And of course 5 just does not work.
We looked at different options including: scaling down each dino (but this became problematic as some pieces would be way too tiny to work with), picking 4 of them and having two on the front and two on the back, etc.
We finally decided to just do two of the dinos, so I added in a sashing and borders and it actually came out to be almost the same size as the sea animals quilt!
The quilting in this one is a combination of random straight lines (like in Bronto's volcano and Rex's "scales") and free motion for the skies, the trees, etc. The thread colors all match the fabric they are on. You can see this better on the back:
OK Leo and Luke.....they're all yours! Have fun.
