My Pinkest Project

Dearest Sister and I have collaborated on quilts for each of her grandbebe girls. We have completed four, which you can get a peek at here, here, here and here.  I embroider 12 blocks with the chosen motif and select the fabric, mostly from my vintage fabric and feedsack stash. 

I give it all to DSis and she pieces it and then quilts it by hand. 

Oh, and I embroider a label.  

In the past, I have worked ahead, planning for subsequent bebes before they are announced and gender known. 

I have gotten behind.

For number five, a charmer who is currently going on eight months old, my original idea was to use Ruby McKim's Roly-Poly Circus in variegated floss and use various colors of fabric.   I transferred the pattern to fabric and stitched up the tiger and the elephant about a year ago. 

Ruby McKim's Roly Poly Elephant

Ruby McKim's Roly Poly Tiger

I decided that they weren't as cute or complex as the previous projects and the variegation doesn't really work very well in the elephant and didn't show up very well in the tiger.

And it is important that each quilt is as special as the others. 

At the time, we were living in our RV and most of my sewing resources were in storage. One of the projects I had prepared to tide me over was a set of Aunt Martha's "Storybook Animals" to stitch in rework.  Eventually, in my mind, the redwork blocks had become the next quilt assignment.

The Storybook Animals in progress.

After completing about 75% of the stitching, I sat down and sorted out who has what quilt and realized that these blocks will not work for the priority project! The problem is that the oldest sister of Baby 5 has a redwork quilt and her next sister has the Storybook animal motif!

After checking with DSis and getting a feel for when she will be ready to work on BebeQuilt 5.0, I began looking through my embroidery designs, vintage coloring books and Flikr groups for ideas.  

I have decided to use the Aunt Martha Baby Animal's group. It comes with 7 designs: cat, dog, lamb, duck, bunny, sheep....and elephant.   While the elly is cute, since it is sort of the odd man out, I am going to save him for another project and use the other six twice to give me 12 total. 

In the past, we have tried to be gender neutral, so I could start before we knew who was expected. No need, in this situation!

I am going with Pink!  

I have sorted through all my pink feedsacks and I am waffling between embroidering on the solid pink feedsack, or use a white flour sack with various shades of pink floss. I only have one pink sack in a shade that plays nicely with the other prints, so I will see if that will be enough.  There are several prints in the bottom of the stack that are multiples, enough for a quilt back, I think.

So, the Storybook Animals go on the back burner. I am sure they will be needed at some point and when they are, I will once again be working ahead!