My Little Pony

Here is another commissioned quilt.  My brother wanted it for his little girl (she is a 2 year old Shiba Inu, so the fluffy kind of kid). Again, this is a licensed (copyrighted) fabric, so I only make quilts of this nature for gifts or on commission. I am a quilter, not a "My Little Pony" dealer. :)

I love my kitties, but all too often, they like to help.  This is what happens when I take a break and go to the bathroom.

My brother prefers quilted rather than tied quilts. With a doggie blanket, this is especially important; they have a tendency to chew off the ties. With this particular quilt pattern, I normally prefer to do a diamond in square quilting on all the blocks. But this time, I thought it wouldn't look very good.  I was not able to completely center the fussy-cut ponies because I didn't have enough fabric. I didn't want to quilt through the ponies.  It would cause them to look even further off center. My solution was to follow the center purple block in more of a plaid design.

Right before I went around the final edge,  I noticed that my thread was really low.  This is the equivalent of a thriller/suspense movie for a quilter... Would I make it? Would I have to run to the store to finish my quilt? What if I almost make it and it looks bad when I switch to the new thread? What if the store doesn't have the right color thread anymore? (When did I buy this spool? Was it five years ago or ten?) Then my bobbin thread runs out. Fortunately, I am using purple on the bottom, so I reloaded my bobbin and continued. Toward the end I held my breath. Two feet... one foot... eight inches... and done.

Made it by the skin of my teeth.  How exciting!

The final quilt. This is the pattern "Little Sailor's Dream." This is becoming one of my go-to quilt patterns. So often, people want a quilt that features something. This quilt pattern lets me put whatever that something is in an otherwise empty block and still do a pieced quilt. It also has a nice number of accent colors.  I really like the three tilted stripes. It's easy to do, but looks really fun.

(Little Sailor's Dream, 38"x 45", December 20, 2012)