This is the first embroidery quilt that I completed. It was a gift for one of my good friend's newborn daughter. Here's the thing about embroidery quilts - THEY TAKE FOREVER TO MAKE! This is the Animal Adventure quilt from Anita Goodesign. Let me start off by saying this - this software is EXPENSIVE! Basically, everyone I know who ever has a baby is going to be getting one of these suckers. The set comes with fifteen different animals, and there is additional software (which I got free from an embroidery party) to get the sixteenth animal, the sheep. Each animal comes with several different style blocks and individual embroidery designs that can be mixed and matched into your own blocks. I chose the peek-a-boo blocks (the large animal blocks - two halves that go together) and the doodle blocks (see below). This quilt was the B size - 6 3/8" blocks, 7x7 = 49 blocks (including the personalized one in the middle).
The hedgehog peek-a-boo block
The duck doodle block
Fabric - for this quilt, I used fabric by Lynette Anderson. I have seen numerous versions of this quilt with many different types of fabrics, and I have to say that the more I see, the happier I am with my fabric choices. Sometimes people choose colors that are extremely different or multicolored, but I really favor how the fabrics I chose are cohesive. Another choice I made was to use wool felt for the animals themselves. This made the animals touchably soft and sweet looking. A warning to anyone who wants to do the same - when you trim around the animals after doing your tack-down stitches, make sure that you trim SUPER CLOSE to the stitching. If not, the satin stitch will not cover the felt edges cleanly. There is also organza required for the blocks that include water. I stole the nice blue color from a bunch of organza that my mother had ordered. It's always good to have someone else's stash at your disposal in addition to your own!
Thread choice - For the most part, I used whatever thread I thought would look good - sometimes going by the listed Floriani thread in the instruction book, but not always. The only consistent thread choices I made were in the background stitching of the peek-a-boo blocks and the generic stitching of the doodle blocks. For these elements, I chose (I believe) six colors of thread and used them for those stitching areas for the entire quilt, again tying the blocks together the way the fabric did.
Tips for stitching these blocks out -
1) They take a really long time. Some of these blocks (I think the ones with the organza were the worst offenders) take hours to make. Many of them have 50 thread changes or more. So be patient, you WILL finish! I stated this quilt in November and finished in February (with a couple weeks off for Christmas presents). I also work, so I don't have loads of time to spend sewing - mostly on weekends.
2) Do not leave your machine running and leave the room! The jump stitches in these blocks are sometimes an issue. Even when I was sitting there watching the machine run, occasionally the foot would run across a jump stitch, catch, and shift the design in the hoop. I ended up having to redo about three or four blocks. Annoying, yes, a tragedy, no. However, I learned quickly to make sure I was paying attention to where the jump stitches were and would often clip one side while the machine was running to prevent any additional catches.
Personalized Block - I used the embroidery program, Embrillinace, to create the personalized block (see below). I wrote the baby's name and birth date and used two of the individual files from the software to tie it into the theme. I also added a stippled background so that it would look like the other blocks.
Personalized Block
Quilting and backing - Here's my biggest complaint with Anita Goodesign quilts like this. I hate! hate! hate! quilts that have squares sewn as the quilting. Here's what you're supposed to do: make all the blocks, sew them together to make your top, use 505 or another similar project to stick your back on, stitch in the ditch to quilt. I can't stand the idea of the back of the quilt just looking like a bunch of squares, so I took my backing fabric and batting (there was already embroidery batting in the blocks, but the extra layer just makes it ever softer and warmer) and brought it to my local fabric store and longarmed just the batting and backing. Then I sandwiched and quilted it, stitching in the ditch with a coordinating color. So my backing had much more interesting quilting than just the squares as called for in the assembly directions. Of course in the picture, you can barely see any quilting, but I promise in real life it looked much better than just the boring squares.
Back of quilt
Despite the amount of time it took to make this quilt, I am thrilled with how it came out. As I said earlier, I'm sure that I will be making variations many times in the future. It's a very sweet pattern, and as long as you are patient (and not in a rush!) it is a very rewarding quilt to make. I'd recommend it (with the aforementioned considerations) to anyone who needs to make a baby quilt or wall hanging.
