We have a new baby in our family and I knew his mom (my niece) was doing a dinosaur theme for his space. Well, it turns out, cute dinosaur fabric is hard to find. I mean I found lots of dino fabric but it's usually very brash and busy and I wanted something sweet and whimsical so I had my heart set on the fabric in this JÄTTELIK duvet set from IKEA. They never seemed to have it in stock so I finally got wise and ordered it online (duh).
For 24.99 I got a bucketload of fabric when I separated the sides of the duvet and pillowcase, plus a seriously long zipper that I'm hanging on to (those can get expensive!).
I took part of the dinos on the main side and cut then into squares while making sure I left enough of a big piece to be the whole back of the quilt. Then I started framing them out with this sweet print from Heather Bailey's True Kisses collection (which I carry in my Fabritopia store).
I cut the pillowcase for this big t-rex panel and framed it out with a green Pure Solid from Art Gallery Fabrics (again, in my store and truly the softest cottons!).
I pieced it all together with a white solid and was sort of bummed when I realized it wasn't an exact match to the white in the dino fabric. But I don't mind a little contrast so, all in all, I'm really happy with it. The duvet fabric is 50 % lyocell, 50 % cotton and it did behave a little bit differently than the cotton fabrics I was adding to it (kind of wiggly like a rayon) but it all came together with the quilting.
My thread kept on breaking at first and it was really frustrating. I have a Juki 2010Q and after quite a bit of online searching I found a great post by Quilting Jet Girl that had great advice (in the comments too). Since I'm in Arizona the part about my thread getting too dry made sense so I got it damp (by squeezing the spool with a wet cloth and letting it set for a bit) and tried again. It behaved so much better! Whew!
I worked my buns off on the front, but to be honest, the back is just as cute! Now you can see why I fell in love with the print!
I always use the Binding The Angel video tutorial from Sharon Schamber and it never fails to give me beautiful results with my quilt binding. The glue tips come from her daughter Cristy Fincher's shop Purple Daisies Quilting and they are the best!
Look at this pretty miter! And black and white fabric makes everything look more vibrant!
I had it all glued and ready to go just in time for my road trip to Oklahoma with my mom, sister, and daughter. I spent my down time hand stitching the binding and unwinding from all the driving.
I used the dino panel on the other side of the pillow case and some other fabrics (including the dino footprint fabric from the duvet) to piece together a new pillowcase to match the whole set. I just sized it for a standard sized pillow.
I still had the complete other half of the duvet sitting there (with the blue dinosaur tracks) and didn't want it to go unused. Then I realized it was perfect for a baby sized fitted sheet! And those are easy so I whipped that up just before leaving town! By the time our road trip was over I was able to hand the whole set over to my sister and watch her stuff it into her, already stuffed, suitcase for her flight back home.
I'm way behind on baby gifts from last year so I'm already on to the next project (and it's so cute!). Keep on sewing!
