X is for eXoskeleton

My little Hyrum finally has a quilt of his own!  This quilt has been in the making for the past two years.  And no, I haven't been working on it that long.  I would quilt on-again-off-again.  But, nothing like a deadline to get a project done!  My sister Katy, as in No Big Dill Katy, has been doing a Sew All 26 series and asked me to contribute for the letter X.  So here we've got a beetle with an eXoskeleton and small, red X stitches on the little tucks running both vertically and horizontally.

This is entirely quilted by hand and done freehand.  I love the imperfection that freehand quilting gives.  It makes it cozier and tells a story.  The beetle and its spots are hand appliqued. I made the pattern after the image of an actual beetle. The straight stitch quilting and the tucks on the perimeter frame the beetle, but closer to the insect is quilting that follows the outline of the hard-shelled critter. The backing has some patchwork, which is new for me.  I usually just keep it simple and use one fabric.  But I liked how it turned out.  It frames the silhouette stitch of the beetle.  

One of my favorite parts of quilting is seeing all the extra wrinkles after it's washed and dried.  This one has an ample amount of wrinkles.  It shrunk quite a bit more than I was expecting, even though I pre-washed.  But the extra crumples were worth it.  

I have a thing for beetles.  I mean, their skeletons are on the outside! Pretty cool.  The patterns and colors are endless in their variety.  Hyrum enjoys the stark contrast in fabrics and actually played peekaboo with the quilt for quite awhile yesterday. I feel like my quilts are a part of me.  They start long before I even touch a needle to fabric.  I often daydream of different designs I want to embody in fabric. I then spend hours and hours cutting, threading, stitching.  So I love that a part of me is wrapped around my babies while they sleep. The next best thing to my arms.