Friday Finish

I have several quilts that I have not been able to post about and this is one of them.  

My niece and nephew were expecting their rainbow baby. 

 I asked about what they were going to do the nursery in.  then answer was "Totoro".  

Say WHAT?!?  

I had absolutely zero idea what that was. 

So, Google to the rescue.  

I looked and LOOKED for something I thought would make a great quilt.  

I saw loads of cute things but didn't think I could translate them into quilts.  

First order of business though was to make a chenille blanket for them.  

I actually found some cute Totoro fabric to use for the back of the blanket.  

Here it is all finished.

I LOVE to make these for baby showers.  They are so soft, babies just love them!

I was swooning over the blue and green chenille.

This is daddy taking baby Q home from the hospital, wrapped in his chenille blanket.

This is the painting I fell in love with. The big animal in the center is Totoro. 

I thought it was so adorable and I thought I could make a quilt from it.  

FIRST though I had to ask the artist if I had permission to do so.  

Sakura Dragon, gave me permission to do it. 

I bought a print of this for the baby's room and framed it.  

That was also part of the shower present.  

This photo doesn't really do justice to how gorgeous the print really is.  

This is what I came up with!  

I LOVE how it turned out. 

 I used minky for the three little animals 

(which I had never done before). 

The quilting could not be more perfect!  

Done by Threadbear Quilting.  

Well done, Kathy!

The little black balls are called Soot Sprites.  

I had the hardest time trying to decide how to make them. 

In the end I chose a black fabric that had lines of different sized white dots running through it. 

 Some of the dots were close to the others so I cut out fusible circles and 

fused them so there were white "eyes" positioned where I wanted them.  

Then if there were any of the neighboring white dots showing, 

I colored them in with black permanent marker! 

 I was pretty pleased with myself!!  

Finally, I did a french knot in black in each white to form the eyes.  

To make the spikes, I free motion stitched around them and worked my way around each circle making the spikes thus securing the circles at the same time.  

I did the scribble stitching around all of the rest of the applique to outline everything and 

free handed the sprouts near the acorn.  

This shows the quilt (prior to my outlining anything) next to the inspiration painting.

So you see that you can take anything you find and turn it into a quilt 

(well maybe not anything, LOL), 

just be sure to ask permission if it is someone else's artwork! 

 I sent a photo of the quilt to the artist too.  

I will leave you with this adorable newborn photo that shows the hand embroidered label on the Totoro quilt. 

(Photo credit Grace Street Photography)

I am going to link up with Crazy Mom Quilts Friday Finish post.

I hope you enjoyed learning about my process.  Have a happy weekend!

~XOP~