The first baby quilt I made in flannel was a jungle themed quilt. I was making it for a co-worker. She was doing a jungle theme for the nursery, so I did my best to come up with a fun quilt. This was another quilt where I didn’t have a pattern, just some sketches of jungle animals.
Sketching out some jungle animals
I knew the approximate size of the quilt I wanted to make. I also knew that flannel could be somewhat hard to work with when trying to make small designs. So I chose to make 4 larger panels of simple jungle animals. I did a few smaller sketches and chose the ones I liked. I then drew them approximately the finished size.
I traced them onto paper and cut them out. You can see the elephant’s head and ear, as well as the lion’s nose and ear and a tiger ear in the photo. I then marked the design on the flannel, added a seam allowance and cut them out.
The seam allowance was turned under and pressed. I then pinned the pieces in place, being careful to layer it in the correct order. I used a zigzag stitch to sew down the pieces. Each layer was added one at a time. You can see the first parts of the giraffe and then the completed image.
The elephant, lion and tiger. I even put small pleats in the pink of the lions ears to add a bit more to the design. I didn’t have a picture of the tiger before quilting.
It’s interesting to see how the lighting made the color of fabric look so different in the photographs. The giraffe and elephant were completed at a quilt retreat and the lion and tiger were done at home.
Putting it all together
I sewed sashing strips between the blocks and added a border of the green background. I used the quilting to add details to the jungle animals like the whiskers on the tiger and the lines on the elephants trunk and ears.
The family was thrilled with the finished quilt and they were the ones that hired me to make a quilt for their older son (the train quilt in this post.)
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