Barnyard Animal Quilt

 When I was looking on Etsy for a transportation themed quilt for my grandson, I ran across this quilt. It is called Sleepy Acres.  It is a bunch of silly barnyard animals in a bed. It was so cute I had to buy the pattern, even though I didn't have an idea of where it was going to end up.

    

This is an appliqué quilt. I cut out squares of the black fabric. I traced the pieces for each animal and all the embellishments on Steam A Seam.  Next I cut roughly around the shapes and ironed each one on the back side of the appropriate fabric and cut on the lines. These pieces were then placed appropriately and ironed on each square.

The white fabric for the bed allowed too much of the black to show through, so the pattern suggested making two of each shape, doubling them up.  This was a lot of ironing, cutting and more ironing.  

Rather than doing a blanket stitch around each appliquéd piece as the pattern instructed, I chose to wait and do a straight stitch around each shape when I got to the quilting phase. This saved a lot of work but ended up making the quilt look a little more rustic where there was a bit of fraying.  I'm not sure how I feel about that. But I am going to do another appliqué quilt and I'll try the blanket stitch and then a straight stitch when quilting and see which I like best.      

There was a bit of embroidery that I did before I put the squares together.  The creases in the rabbit ears, a bit of satin stitching on the cookies to indicate chocolate chips, and the numbers on the sheep to show counting, etc.

Isn't this the perfect back? It is flannel for softness and has a bunch of barnyard animals!  It wasn't wide enough, so I bought extra and made it double wide. Now I have a bunch of left over fabric.  I may make a pillow or something with it.

After I put all squares together with the sashing and borders, I quilted around all the pieces to attach them and sewed the border.

I washed the quilt to see if the areas with triple layers of fabric and glue would soften up a little.  They did.  But then I found places that were fraying too much and added some more stitches. 

The pattern called for buttons and beads for the eyes.  If I had to do it again I would embroider them before quilting. If they pose a problem, I will remove them and add the embroidery.

I really like the quilt and hope the eventual recipient will like it too!