Under the Sea Quilt

I made an Under the Sea quilt for my granddaughter, pretty much on a whim. She's just about 6 months old now, and right at that stage where she wants to grab everything and put it in her mouth. I wanted to make her a quilt that had things going on; tentacles to boing, contractile arms to pet, and teeth to poke. I think they call them "activity quilts."

I made a sketch of the design some months ago, but I couldn't figure out a good way to get all those moving parts installed. Then I stumbled on a Bluprint class called "Cute Quilt-As-You-Go Applique Monsters," taught by Wendi Gratz, and all my questions were answered. Et voila!

Once I had some guidance on technique it was all pretty quick to do. Wendi Gratz has you quilt the individual squares, then use HeatnBond and a hot iron to fuse your little bits to the surface. Then you just stitch around the edges and Bob's your uncle. She says she's made quilts for her daughter that have been washed 300 times and everything holds together just fine. We shall see, because my granddaughter and her co-conspirator (her big brother) and sure to spill things on it daily.

Character #1 is a shark. There's a viral video called Baby Shark that both kids love; very catchy tune. So I had to include a shark. I used some little bobble trim for the teeth.

Character #2 is an octopus. Four of the arms swing free and they have minky on the back side, so they're kind of fun to finger. I tried to find something for the back that would be like suckers, but no dice.

Character #3 is a jellyfish. There's a narrow elastic in each of the tentacles, so you can pull them out and they boing back.

Character #4 was the last one I came up with. It was going to be a clown fish, but I couldn't find any good clown fish fabric. I did see some orange batik that I liked, so instead he's a Garibaldi fish. That's the California State marine fish, in case you're wondering. Normally he hides in the kelp, but you can take him out and boing him around on his elastic if you want to.

In the center there's a starfish that's stuffed with a little bit of batting to make her 3D.

This was a really fun project to do. The actual sewing only took a couple of days. I spent longer trying to get that danged elastic inside the jellyfish tentacles than on anything else. I ended up finishing and turning the fabric tubes and then threading the elastic through with a darning needle.

My granddaughter gave the quilt a workout during my visit last weekend. She went right for the tentacles, as I would have done myself.

Plus, she figured out how to get the Garibaldi fish out of the kelp in mere moments. I think she is a genius.

I was a happy Craftsy user for quite some time. I tried to resist buying a Bluprint subscription for months. I worry that it's going to become just another streaming TV station and go over to the advertising dark side. They finally offered me such a good rate that I buckled and joined for a year. And it's been good so far. I've watched classes that I probably wouldn't have purchased under the old Craftsy model and I've enjoyed some of them very much.

This class is one of those serendipitous finds. If you have any kids in your life who might enjoy a tactile quilt, I recommend it!

Actually, this style of quilt would be fun to do for an adult if you use less childish imagery. My friend Martha and I were saying I should make an anvil quilt for The Man. He's heavy into anvils at the moment, and they have distinctive silhouettes that would lent themselves to this sort of thing. Hmmm.