Ryleigh's (but really Ashleigh's) Turtle Quilt

While on vacation in Michigan, I decided I wanted to make my friend Ashleigh a quilt for her daughter. Ashleigh's daughter's room is decorated in sea turtles. I had a bit of experience working with sea turtles so I took on the challenge of creating a custom made sea turtle quilt.

I wanted it to be bright and vibrant... but most of all, I wanted to sew with some pink fabrics!

The design has a quilt block in the four corners of the border. I choose Snail Trail in the teal I was using for my water background and a bright pink.

This block was the most difficult block I had ever taken on, THANK GOD for my Mom. She showed me the tips and tricks, like lining up the points of a triangle on one of your lines. In the end... after some ripping and stitching, I felt very accomplished to have this as my final product...

I designed the middle based off a quilt my Mom made for my son which has sea turtle and coral/seaweed on it. Her quilt was much more detailed and also was hand appliqued, but I took the idea and modified it.

My mom and I had been to a quilt show recently and I kept seeing this cool form of quilting. Here is a photo I took while at the show. (If this is your quilt and would like credit please contact me and I will make sure I note your name. I didn't get the name while at the show. )

I decided this technique would look good on the center portion of the quilt. Plus since I was on a bit of a deadline, it would be quick!

I drew a rough sketch of what I wanted the center to look like and started cutting my fabric. The center turned out better than I could have ever hoped for! Take a look...

I don't yet have a photo of the finished product, but I will within days. I learned a new technique for quilting the final product, so look for that in an upcoming blog too!

I will end this blog with the best photo of all! One very happy little girl enjoying her new blanket!

Designing my Turtle Quilt

I have under taken this quilt that I have designed from scratch! I even used my graphic design skills to create a digital pattern.

Here is how it all started... I wanted to make a Sea Turtle Quilt for my son's nursery. I fell in love with this brown pok-a-dotted fabric. I decided it would make a great back. I found some fat quarters that would look go

od with the brown fabric. So I had my center piece fabric, I just didn't have a sea turtle pattern.

Well, I wouldn't let a little thing like that stop me... so I searched online for sea turtle pictures or drawings. I finally found the perfect photo, so I imported it into photoshop and erased the center until I just had the outline

and voila (that is suposed to be that french term, I don't know if I spelled it correct) Anyway, here is what I ended up with.

Once I had my sea turtle ironed onto my fabric, I took a photo of it and imported that into Adobe Illistrator. I then designed how I wanted the final quilt to be. I figured out how I plan to do the boarder and corners. The only difference in the final draft is that there will be a baby sea turtle crawling out of an egg in the upper left hand block.

I have chosen the fabric for the boarder, it will help bring out the blue/teal dots in the brown fabric.

I still have to finish the applique stitching, but I haven't decided if I will do it by hand or machine. I am very excited to get to work on the boarder since it will be the first time I work with triangles!