Baby Play Quilt Top Completed

Dinos and Pets Play Quilt top

I am pleased to say that I have finally completed my Grandbabies' play quilt top. :)

I used a variety of blocks to make it interesting. There are 4 'Hankie Pets' blocks, a blue Minkee Puppy, a pink Minkee kitty, a yellow Minkee bear and a green Minkee frog, all with floppy paws.

There are  4 'Delectable Dino' blocks with floppy feet and dinosaur heads to touch and move, and   4 'peek-a-boo' blocks with flaps with ribbons to lift. They each have a cute appliqué animal underneath. :)

The rest of the blocks are pinwheels.
My challenge for this quilt was the Prairie Points edge, which I sewed around the outside.  I have never done "Prairie Points" edging before so I wasn't sure how to go about it.   I wanted to make the points  from the same fabrics that were on the quilt top itself.


Making the points was quite a bit of work: cutting the 3 1/2 inch squares, folding them twice diagonally and pressing the resulting triangles flat.  I made 110 of these!   Now... how to attach them to the quilt...

I went online and found 2 different methods:
One method called for the points to be sewn on the quilt top itself before quilting and the other method was to sew them on last after quilting.
With the second method, once the points were sewn on and turned outward, it resulted in a 1/4 inch ridge around the outside of the quilt back which then had to be stitch down. (I didn't like that idea.)

Arranging blocks; auditioning sashing fabric to sew between blocks

The method I liked was the first one, to sew the points onto the quilt top itself.  I arranged them with points inward and the raw edges outward against the raw edge of the quilt top, then I sewed them on carefully about 2 inches apart using a 1/4 inch seam.  After that I pressed all the points outwards. That's as far as I am now.

Sewing on the Prairie Points with a 1/4 inch seam

The rest of the directions say:  after pinning the batting and backing on, quilt it carefully up to 2 inches from the edge of the quilt.  Next trim the batting the same size as the quilt edge (not including the prairie points) and trim the back fabric about 1/4 inch wider than that. After that turn under that extra 1/4 inch of backing over the edge of the batting, finger press it and last hand stitch it to the back of the prairie points.

My next issue was what to use for back fabric. I had a bright piece of yellow Minkee, but unfortunately, it was too small. I drove the hour to the city yesterday to pay a visit to Fabricland which just happened to be having a sale on. Yay!

I found the perfect green colored thick fleece for the back which means I can skip the batting altogether.

(Of course I also found a number of other bargains, some beautiful Northcott flannel for just $6 a meter, so I bought 4 meters, 2 m in a pink print and 2 m in blue to make 2 more fitted sheets for my grandbabies' cribs.

Fabricland also had their Timeless Treasures fabric on sale for $7 a meter so I bought 6 meters of that, 2 m of yellow star fabric, 2 of blue star fabric (for the back of my Delectible Dinos quilt) and 2 m of a brown fabric from the Little Golden Book series which matches the  Shy Little Kitten panel that I have in my stash.

Now it's time to wash my kitchen floor so that I can pin my play quilt together there and then start  quilting the blocks. :D


http://www.hgtv.com/handmade/prairie-point-quilting-borders-101/index.html

Work in progress...

Four out of five rows have been sewn together  here