The Princess and the Pea Quilt

Here I thought I had this glorious idea; we call my 17 month old daughter Princess Pea, so I thought - "Wow, a Princess Pea quilt would be awesome to make her for her first quilt!"  The wheels turned.  I had it almost all planned out.  I googled it - - and found it.  Yep.  Somebody had already been there and done that.  And guess where it was?  On the Moda Bakeshop site.

The nice thing with finding the quilt done before, is it took all my guesswork out of making my princess.  Oh, I figured I would applique her on, but I didn't know how she would look.  Done!

I hand stitched a face on her.

The Moda Bakeshop version has ruffles all along the edge and the princess is without a face.  So after the applique portion was done I pretty much broke away from the Bakeshop tutorial and did my own thing.

I knew right away I wanted to put Hans Christian Andersen's story of the Princess and the Pea on the back.  I pieced a frame with some scraps into the backing so I would know where to put the story as I didn't want to quilt over it.  Printed the story onto fabric off my computer - and WALLAH! 

This quilt was not without it's frustrations. I don't know how many times I broke out my seam ripper. And I'm not all that crazy about the quilting job on it either;  I must not have had the layers tight enough while basting. I have always pinned basted but am thinking about trying spray basting on my next quilt. 

The pea


As I hand stitched the binding, story, label and pea on, my little pea would cuddle up next to me and drape the portions I was not working on over herself.  She usually isn't very cuddly, so these were precious moments.

Size: 44" x 50"
Fabrics: Strawberry Fields by Fig Tree Quilts for Moda, scraps I had for the applique.  Face and hands are felt.
Quilting: Stitch in the ditch for the mattresses and free motion clouds in the open space at the top - all done by me on my home machine.
Completed: February 2012