Arghh, It's Me Pirate Ship Quilt Matey!

This quilt was finished before Christmas, and I took the pictures back in January when I was pregnant, just never got around to writing about it.  I figured the Blogger's Quilt Festival would be the perfect time for this little guy to make its debut!

Now that the gift has been received by my son, I am free to show you guys how his pirate ship quilt turned out, without fear of him seeing it prematurely!  This is a quilt of many things, first off, I learned a new technique along the way (free motion quilting.) I let go of all my "perfectionist ways" and just went with it, imperfections and all that would normally drive me NUTS (the sky being several different fabrics.)  This is the largest quilt that I have done all the quilting by machine, to date, and this quilt is also made of nothing but scraps.  The only yardage was used on the back, and I had just one yard of it, so that tells you that this little quilt is 36" x 36."

I embroidered his name on the flag, sorry folks that is for our eyes only!  You can also see here an example of some of the free motion quilting that I did on this quilt.  How do you like my clouds?  Not bad for the first time and very little practice before hand, if I do say so myself!  Can you tell how proud I am?  I was so annoyed that I didn't have enough of the seagulls to do the entire sky, but in the end I decided to use a matching solid for the rest and I pretended that the ship was sailing into a "patch of seagulls!"

I used the small bit of "my precious" Heather Ross mermaids and fish, which I had to piece together like crazy to make it long enough for this quilt.  I figured if my own son didn't deserve this precious fabric, then who does?  I also did a bit of FMQ as the "waves in the water."  You can also see that I used a large ric-rac for a dimensional aspect and that "wave" effect.  You can also see some precious Denyse Schmidt fabric that makes up the body of the boat!  The outer border consists of a bunch of pirate and skeleton prints, all of which my son loves, and even though it creates quite the tacky effect, it is perfect for a 4 year old.

The backing is a great "pirate dogs" print, and I think my son likes the back just as much as the front!  I actually used a floral B&W print for the binding, but since it was a large scale print, you can't really tell that it is floral, which worked out quite nice.

The pattern for the ship can be found in the Modern Blocks book by Susanne Woods.  It is found on page 166-167 and is entitled the "Set Sail Block."  The pattern is for a 12.5" square block, so I doubled all of the dimensions, making this ship block 25" square.  I used a high loft polyester batting, so that it would be "extra cushy" and soft.

Thanks for stopping by and visiting during the festival, make sure to check out the other entries over at Amy's Creative Side!