Derek's quilt

I've known Jenny since she was 4 or 5. She asked me to make her nephew Derek a quilt. A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle quilt to be specific. She promised to get him sheets when he was a kid and never did. Now he is 6'4". We are going to make him one of my signature Man-Size Afghan. The width is at least 4' and the length is at least 6'. Derek is, however, taller than 6' so we are going up a half foot in length.



Jenny found sheets that have large motifs on them. A couple of sheets were rejected because they were too thin and had a high polyester content. Fabric with a high polyester content will pill with wear. If you are quilting with fabric that has a high polyester content the batting will beard through the fabric. Ugly! Another sheet was made of single knit, nice looking sheet, we thought about using it for the backing, however, it was Way off grain.



The dark sheet on the bottom will be used as backing. I will cut up the other turtle sheet into the separate motifs. Then put either a thin yellow or red border around each motif and set everything together with the green. I plan on sew strips of the green, yellow, green, red together, then cut the rectangle on the bias for the binding.



I am going to use the Crazy Shortcut Quilts method of quilting the blocks and setting them together. Marguerita posted about a quilt-along. I agreed to do one with her, so I am killing two birds with one stone. True, this is not a crazy quilt, however, this technique will work with more traditional quilts.

I am going to try using Sulky's clear polyester thread for the quilting. (I have not used it before.) It is an idea I picked up from watching one of Marguerita videos. I don't want the quilting running across the figures to be very noticeable. Most of the motifs are 8 to 10 inches square and the batting says 2 to 4 inch spacing on the quilting.

Happy quilting and have a good day!

Judy