Jo Avery – the Blog

Rebecca’s Cot Quilt

 
After a bit of a rush, I have just finished this cot quilt for Sarah’s new baby.

Sarah is my very hard working (and now very missed!) colleague, who went on her maternity leave about a month ago. Her baby wasn’t due until mid October, but little Rebecca couldn’t wait to start her life and was 3 weeks early! So this meant I was quite behind with her cot quilt. But now, at last, it is finished.

I designed it to match this cot quilt I made for Rebecca’s big brother Henry (who is 2 and a half). The elephant and giraffe applique in the centres are based on paintings that Sarah had for Henry’s nursery.
When I started to think about what to do for Sarah’s second baby I decided to try to match the first one but with different animals.

To start with I tried to design some animals in the same style. I managed a zebra quite well but couldn’t manage to get any other ‘jungle animals’ to work. Because of the strong graphic design, only animals with a long snout worked (not, for instance, a lion). In the end I researched the original artist, who is called Erica J Vess, to see what else she had done in the same style and came across a collection of stick-legged farm animals. After a consultation with Sarah, we decided on the cow and the horse.

 
I used a combination of reverse and traditional needle-turn applique to make the 3 cows and 3 horses. Then I trimmed them to the middle block size and strip pieced a log cabin around them.

I did the black outline with a back stitch in embroidery silk and then hand quilted it (not very heavily as I was already behind). I got to meet tiny Rebecca on Wednesday (she is beautiful), and Henry helped me take the quilt up to his bedroom to measure it against his. I had been worried I had made the strips a different width this time, but no, it was exactly the same.

For both cot quilts I have not known what gender the babies were when I was making them, so they had to be quite neutral (as it happened this time, if I had waited another few days before I pieced the top I would have known Rebecca was a girl!). In the end I think Henry’s is more ‘girly’ than Rebecca’s, but they do look good together, and mummy was very happy with the result!

 

10 comments

  1. Jo both these quilts are just gorgeous! You've done a beautiful job of appliquing the animals. I'm so impressed that you did these animals from scratch with only a picture!

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