quilt in progress

I always seem to have a million things on the go at any time!  One of the projects I am working on at the moment is a quilt for friends who are expecting their first child in June.  They were keen for something with Dr Suess on it and I just happened to have some material in my fabric stash that was suitable....  I agonised over how I was going to make the quilt, but in the end (after several abandoned attempts) I decided I wanted something that was a little crazy - just like Dr Suess and his characters!

I adapted a technique for designing and sewing the quilt from Philippa Naylor which is described in her book Quilting in the Limelight (2009):

I designed my pattern/quilt shape on freezer paper, labelled each of the pieces and then cut them out.

Next I ironed individual freezer paper pieces to the Dr Suess characters I wanted to feature.  I added a 1/4 inch seam allowance to each piece of fabric. (My favourite tool for adding any seam allowance is the attachment on my rotary cutter seen in the picture below)

Once all the pieces were cut out and arranged, I sewed them together (while keeping the freezer paper in place to act as a guide for the stitching).  This is the result:

I sewed blue piping around the outside of the quilt because I wanted something a little different and to give some definition to the quilt. To do this I used a technique described in another of my books, Piping Hot Curves (2007) by Susan K Cleveland. 

I've added an orange border to the quilt

and now I am contemplating how I finish it....

I think I am going to cut the outer edge in a similar curvy way to the body of the quilt, and I want the quilting in the border to be a little random as well.  But I am not really sure how I am going to quilt the rest of it....  However, my backing fabric arrived yesterday so I will have to get cracking!!