Other posts on this project: Dr. Seuss Quilt Pt. 1, Dr. Seuss Quilt Pt. 2, Dr. Seuss Quilt Pt. 3.

I finally finished this quilt! It’s a horribly belated first birthday present, but I love this quilt to pieces. I hope Hannah loves it, too.

Other posts on this project: Dr. Seuss Quilt Pt. 1, Dr. Seuss Quilt Pt. 2.

It’s been more than a month since I’ve sewn anything, but last week I finally started getting back to myself around here. And I made the backing for the Dr. Seuss quilt. And took really terrible photos of it, this was the best in the bunch. I will post better photos next time I have a chance to lay this out in good lighting, I promise.

It’s kind of a quick and dirty job with whatever fabrics I had left from this collection. But I actually think it looks cool on the back of the quilt.

I have also sandwiched and sewn the layers together, but I’m in the process of taking out some really bad quilting stitches and trying again. I haven’t taken any other photos of my progress, but I’m really hoping to have this finished by the weekend. We shall see, then it’s on to a beach quilt!

Other posts on this project: Dr. Seuss Quilt Pt. 1.

I finished the top! And I did it in time for Dr. Seuss’s birthday on Saturday, which seemed fitting.

The sashing was a little tricky to sew on once I’d assembled the blocks with the flaps…I had to be really careful not to sew the flaps down. But once I got the hang of it things moved along pretty easily. I’m surprised how quickly this came together, and how much I love the look of it.

The flaps aren’t perfect, but who cares? Hannah is going to have a blast with this when it’s all finished.

I’d originally invited some mom friends over for Dr. Seuss Day on Saturday. I’ve had this idea of starting a Mommy and Me book club for a while, so Dr. Seuss Day seemed like a great day to start. (Really, I thought it would just be cool to get the young moms and kids I know together, and I love anything with a theme). But, Saturday turned out to be horrible for everyone. We will try again next month, but my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew CJ did come over to hang out for a couple of hours. So I put the quilt top down and let them test drive it.

CJ approves.

Hannah gives him the side-eye. Sassafras.

So I’ve had this Dr. Seuss fabric for a while now, at least a couple of years. I have 3 different collections of Dr. Seuss fabric and have never thought of a great project for them. But I’ve been working for weeks with the PTA on Read Across America projects for tomorrow, so I’ve had Dr. Seuss on the brain. It was time to make Hannah a new play quilt (she’s been taking this one to her sitter’s all year) and I thought a lift-the-flap quilt would be really cool for her at this age. So I’ve been inspired, and I thought it would be a fun quilt to work on leading up to her first birthday.

I’d seen a couple of examples on Pinterest that I liked, but none were quite right. So I’ve been experimenting with some design ideas and finally came up with a block that I’m really loving. A simple 4 patch using 2 squares of the text fabric and 2 squares with characters. The character  squares are under the flaps, which are all made with various stripes and dots from my Grinch and Cat in the Hat fabrics. So at first glance it’s just text, dots, and stripes. But there are surprises under every flap. Every square I cut was 6.5″.

I’m using black fabric as the sashing between blocks, so the top right flaps were attached when I sewed those strips on.

The bottom left flaps were pinned and sewn in when I sewed the 4 patches together.

This actually ended up using way more fabric than I’d originally realized, because I’m making 16 blocks total. But it’s coming together so quickly.

To make the flaps, I folded fat quarters in half and cut 6.5″ squares on the fold.

So really I cut rectangles, but I just found this made it much easier to sew up. Right sides together, I sewed three sides closed, leaving the side opposite the fold completely unstitched.

Then it was easy to turn them right side out and topstitch around the 3 sewn sides. That left the tops free and clean to pin in place over the 4 patch blocks I’d made.

So next I’m piecing the blocks together into a 4 block by 4 block quilt top. But, of course, I now realize that sewing the black sashing strips onto the left and right sides of these blocks will be tricky since the flaps may get in the way. I’ll have to be pretty careful with them, we’ll see how it works out!

Other posts on this project: Parisville Quilt Pt. 1, Parisville Quilt Pt. 2, Parisville Quilt Pt. 3.

I’ve finished the quilting on this quilt and moved on to the binding, but here is a sneak peak at the quilting:

I used a variegated purple thread and free motion quilted it. The bright thread on the ivory solid obviously points out every mistake I made, but I kind of love that in a way. I love the contrast. And I decided to do something different for this quilt and only quilt the solid background fabric. The actual Parisville fabric remains without quilting, I just stitched in the ditch around those patchwork sections to set them off.

I love it.