Star of the Show: Sailboat

Finally! I finally got this one done. With the kids’ school going to at-home online learning my routine got turned around a bit. I have a hard time going off on my own to work on projects with others home. Not that I’m needed by them that much for their work, it’s just that I know as soon as I go upstairs to work that someone will call for me. Although, I did just now move upstairs. I can’t have talking while I’m writing because I start typing what I hear.

In my last post I made the Star of the Show baby blanket with a cow and mentioned that it could be changed easily for other themes. I also said that I was planning on making it in blues with a sailboat. I work with a very nice Dutch lady who was pregnant (she just had her boy two days ago) and wanted to make it for her baby.

After a few planning attempts this is what I came up with:

The main sailboat’s sail is in reference to the flag of the Netherlands. The orange background is their national color due to their royal family’s name being Orange.

Here are the fabrics that I pulled out:

I had my main fabric, the shark print, then all the other fabrics were pulled from the colors in the shark print.

I started by making a pattern for the main sail boat. For instructions on how to make the boat click here.

Here it is done:

My white sail is a bit bigger than the one in the plan. I measured incorrectly and didn’t notice until the whole block was done and I really didn’t want to take it apart to fix it.

Did you see the top little flag? It’s flappy.

The little boats in the background were next. Here is the plan for those:

I got the measurements correct on these ones. To see how to make these blocks click here.

Oh, look, these fabrics have stars and stripes in them. How weird. I wonder what they represent?

Anyways, four were made in total. They look so summery.

Next came cutting all the 100- 3 1/2 inch squares and 16- 3 7/8 half square triangles out of various colors, 3- 6 1/2 inch white squares and 8- 6 7/8 inch orange triangles. Following the plan I laid them out.

To make the main body of the quilt I started with the orange triangle squares.

I then moved on to sewing groups of four squares into a larger square.

Those squares then got all sewn up into a top.

The top was then quilted with the shark print for the background. I added some stitched sailboats in the white squares. I made a template with cardstock and an razor knife then traced it onto the fabric with a fabric pencil.

The edges were then bound with the red anchor fabric.

All that’s left to do is get it to her. Maybe I can drive really slowly past her house and throw it. It would be a drive by gifting! Or I could just knock on the door and hand it to her. Much less exciting, but more adult like.

Anyways, I hope you liked seeing how this blanket came together.