Jungle baby quilt reveal!

It was the morning of my sister’s baby shower, and I showed up at my sister’s house with a cardboard gift box. Instead of giving her the present, I locked myself in the nursery rearranged the room, much to the chagrin of her uber-friendly beagle, and staged a photo shoot with the jungle baby quilt I’ve been working on for her son.

Nobody really finds my behavior weird anymore. They get that I am completely obsessed with quilting.

I think my family was surprised that I actually finished the quilt before the baby arrived. I put the final stitches in the quilt at 1 a.m. two nights before the shower, so I cut it close as usual.

The quilt was inspired by jungle graphics she ordered on Etsy for the nursery. I took the original graphics, blew them up and arranged them in a formation that would work for a quilt.

The lion was the centerpiece of the quilt and arguable the cutest animal of the bunch. This was the first time what I saw in my head translated into the quilting when I worked on the longarm. I was very pleased with how the echo quilting added texture to the mane.

For the giraffe I used a small meander for the body and swirls within the spots. I thought the circles helped to accentuate the shape of the spots.

The elephant gave me some trouble during the quilting. I had hoped to the head using waves, to make it look wrinkly like an elephant. But the fabric was moving and bunching, so I had to rip it out and use a large meander instead.

I worked on the binding during a quilt getaway my Guild sponsored. There I got the best compliment I’ve ever received on a quilt. A fellow Guild member asked who quilted it. I think that means all my practice at Quilting By You is starting to pay off. Plus my sister loved it, and that’s all that matters.

If you want to see more photos, check out my Facebook page.