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Saturday, August 29, 2020

Stuffed Animal Quilt by Fire Monkey

 I've talked here before about how my son occasionally likes to sew with me.  Our last project was the quilt for his teacher last school year, and we've been planning to make a small quilt (or two or more) for his stuffed animals.  In what is possibly the most adorable thing ever, he's even told me that his animals have been asking for quilts.  So when I had sizeable offcuts from snowballing the corners of Stormy Seas, I stitched and squared up the resulting HSTs and set them aside for him to play with.

 

I gave them to him one afternoon, along with a lime green fleece remnant for backing, and had him lay out the HSTs however he wanted.  I had to assist a bit to get a shape that we could actually sew, but the layout was completely his.  When we sew, I steer the fabric and he uses the foot pedal, which we place on the table so he can use his hands.  (A brilliant tip from Kathleen McMusing that was a game-changer for us!)

You can see his aesthetic is much more modern than his mama's!  I wanted it to truly be his, so I didn't push for a recognizable pattern or layout.  

Fire Monkey loves the "fancy stitches" on my machine and is always disappointed that we can't use them for piecing.  So I let him go nuts when we get to quilting.  For this, we did straight lines accross the short side so we'd have more rows and therefore more stitches.  My favorite is the star.  He picked some fun ones, including this tree that I don't think I've used before.  We agreed on the bright yellow Aurifil thread.


Since these fabrics are from Island Batik's Colorpop collection, I pulled what I still had of the fat quarter bundle and let him pick a binding.  He picked a multicolored dot.  We used fancy stitches to stitch it down.

You can see that Bunny, the current favorite, loves their new quilt!  Fire Monkey is ready for his next project but I don't think he's chosen one yet.  He certainly has more stuffed animals that could use blankets!

Materials used in this project were given to me by Island Batik, Aurifil, and Schmetz.

7 comments:

  1. Very cute. My grandson likes to sew also and has made a few little quilts too. It’s so much fun to see them thinking up the designs.

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  2. This is just adorable. He has a great eye for layout, if you ask me. I haven't ever thought of using those stitches for quilting! Bunny looks very comfy under his new quilt!

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  3. Awww I love this post, tell Fire Monkey he did a great job!! Makes me miss sewing with my grandsons, haven't done this since Covid:(

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  4. This is great! I love that he loves the fancy stitches. He picked a great binding...it is so nice when you can share sewing with them.

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  5. This was a really fun post. I love it when pictures of fire monkey are included

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  6. His animals need quilts!!! Oh my goodness, he has such a caring heart.
    So cute and his smile is the best reward!!! I am jealous of the bunny, just a tad.

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  7. Super cute! Of course the stuffies need quilts - makes perfect sense to me. Fun use of the extra HST's too! He is adorable Emily.

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