Finish: Princess and The Pea

I just realized that I never shared this quilt with you all!

For Spring Quilt Market, Heather Ross asked if I’d be willing to make a twin-sized quilt for the Windham Booth using her new Far, Far Away line. I of course jumped at the opportunity! (As it turns out, I have zero ability to tell Heather “no.” Hopefully she never uses this power for ill-gotten gains.)

She sent over a sketch of what she wanted as well as the fabrics, and I began working on making it a reality. (As a quick aside, the quilting cottons in this line are incredibly soft. The previous project I made used strike offs, so I was surprised at just how soft the actual fabric was.) I was somewhat constrained by time and the fabrics (all the solids needed to be Windham solids, and I only had a few on hand) but a few late nights and remembering a fabric bundle I had with some solids in it got me through the most stressful stuff!

The mattresses are all improv pieced. I took some elements from the drawing that I really liked and also added my own. The hardest part of this step is that my design wall was too small to fit all the pieces, so I had some trouble getting the top and bottom of the bed even so it didn’t curve one way or the other. The first time everything was sewn together, it leaned pretty heavily to one side. I pulled up the opposite side until it wasn’t leaning and made a crease there, leaving a large triangular-shaped pucker along most of the back. I sewed along the crease line I had created, so now the pucker was all in the seam allowance. I trimmed that off, and voila! Straight[-ish] bed!

As with all of Heather’s designs, there is always room for some fun embellishments. I decided to keep the bed skirt free hanging on one side, and bound it in the same fabric that we were planning to bind the actual quilt with. I thought it was a fun way to tie together this concept of a quilt with a bed on it that you’re going to put on a bed.

And of course embroidered details! There is a small pea embroidered in the design. It’s between the bedskirt and the bottom mattress, and I’m guessing only princesses will notice it. 🙂

Heather also really wanted the princess to look cranky, so it was really important to nail the expression. I actually had the most fun with this part! I was originally going to make the eyes the same color as the rest of the embroidered details (dark brown), but I decided to make the eyes blue and I love the way that turned out.

The quilting itself was done by a long-arm quilter, and it went straight to market from there, so I haven’t actually seen this quilt finished in person. However, it was really fun watching it pop up on instagram during market, and Leanne @ she can quilt was kind enough to send me pictures of it and my play mat hanging in the Windham booth.

Details
Dimensions: 65-ish x 90-ish? It was trimmed by the long-armer so I am not sure what size it ended up at.
Fabrics: Far, Far Away by Heather Ross, plus some solids from Windham’s 1930’s solid line, Cream & Sugar line, and Paint line.
Binding: Unicorns in red-orange.
Methods: Improv piecing, appliqué and embroidery.
Time for completion: 6 days.
Number of corners cut: Literally – 1 (upper right, but it turned into a fun improv detail when I fixed it), Metaphorically – Let’s just not put that in writing, shall we?