Greatest Hits...Goodnight Moon

I have a couple of projects that are in the beginning stages which will be shared more soon, but I thought that during the lull I might go back and look at some of the quilts that I’m proudest of.  First on my list of “Greatest Hits” is the Goodnight Moon play mat that I made towards the end of my pregnancy with #2 in 2010. 

Big sis at 20 months

At that stage, my oldest was 2 and her favorite book was Goodnight Moon.  It was the first book that she memorized from beginning to end and we read it at least twice a day.  I figured that if her older sister had anything to say about it, little sis would probably love it too (and she does!).

 

 

 

I had just started reading Aneela Hoey’s blog Comfort Stitching and was incorporating bits and pieces of embroidery into my sewing projects.  The illustrations throughout the book seemed chock full of great pictures with simple lines, so after a bit of trial and error and experimenting with tracing techniques (I settled on a water-soluble marker and traced using a lamp under our glass coffee table), I had 9 different embroidered squares. 

 

At the same time, I was reading about quilt-as-you-go projects and thought I’d try that out too.  I wanted each drawing to be outlined in a different shape and tried to get all of the main colors from the book – the tomato red, navy blue and bottle green – which were nothing like what I already had in my little stash.  I trekked out with our big board book to match up the fabric and thread colors as best as I could and was pretty happy with the results! 

 

When all the squares were sewn together and seams were tacked down, it still needed something, so I added white borders and embroidered the opening lines from the book around 3 of the edges with the book title at the top.  The backing is a navy fabric with stars that I wrapped around to the front and topstitched.

 

Did I have some embroidery errors?  Oh, heck yeah. 

Bright blue embroidery thread + white fabric = not a great idea

 Some major buckling issues so that it doesn’t lie perfectly flat?  Yep, that too.  But as I sewed among the imperfections, I still loved it and knew that the girls would love it too.  In fact it’s been loved so much that I’ve had to do some repairs and it’s been through the laundry more times than I can count - all the signs of a happy quilt.

Brand new little sister!

Still loving it 6 months later...