When I was going through a bunch of my samples for the trunk show I did at a guild last week, I realized that I have a lot of quilts that have never been featured on my blog. I decided that it’s time to remedy that! I thought I’d go through my piles and piles of projects and take some more photos (I made many of these projects back before I had a good camera to photograph them with.)  I’m going to try to regularly (say, every week or so) highlight one of my projects. And I decided that I need a good name for this little parade of sewing projects… I happen to love alliteration, so I am calling this new feature the

“Stitched Stuff Spotlight.”

I redecorated the spare bedroom of our house last summer, choosing a white bedspread and neutral paint and curtains so that I could display all kinds of quilts on the bed. As I continue with this feature, you will see most of the quilts in the series displayed in this room.

To kick off my first “Stitched Stuff Spotlight” post, I am featuring a quilt called “David’s Playmates.”  I designed this quilt because up until that point, all of my quilts had been quite “girly” (not surprising, since I am quite a “girlie girl”- and I happen to have 2 daughters who are also sort of “girlie girls.”) Someone mentioned to me at a quilt show that she was having a hard time finding cute boys’ quilt patterns- so I decided it was time to design a

Cute Boys’ Quilt!

I thought about all the things that say “boy” to me- colors like blues and greens and tans and browns…. and creatures like frogs and bugs and turtles…. and how little boys often make “friends” with these sort of unlovely and creepy critters!

The quilt consists of different sized and shaped units and blocks, with a really fun and simple saw tooth border.

I had so much fun finding the fabrics for this quilt. As you can see in the photo above, I even found a fabric that was the perfect shade of green with a fish pattern in it! I also adore Swiss dots- you know, those tiny little delicately dotted fabrics. They act like a solid, but I think they’re sort of lively and delightful.

There is some machine applique (of course, you could hand applique it, also.) I love applique, because very often I feel the need to “draw pictures” with my fabric! So here are some of those little friendly critters:

I don’t use batiks very often, but this blue one was perfect! I love it! I used it in the fish as well as the saw tooth border.

And of course, boys love bugs:

You’ve probably noticed that there’s just a bit of hand embroidery for faces, antennae, etc.

My machine quilter did a fun all-over design with flowers and dragonflies:

If you would like to make this quilt for a special little fellow, you can find the pattern here.

So tell me- do you make a lot of children’s quilts? Do they tend to be very boy or girl focused, or more gender neutral? Do you make other children’s projects, besides quilts? And are your projects for a particular child in your life, for charity quilts, etc?? Let me know in the comments!