Flying Zebra Quilt

 

Who doesn't need a flying zebra in their life? You might remember this block from this post, and if so, your memory is quite good. I made a bunch of blocks for Elizabeth's Crazy-9-Patch-Lattice quilt, but commandeered a couple for another quilt.

This quilt uses two 9-patch blocks in the center and moves outward from there, with a series of borders framing the center blocks. I saw a quilt online somewhere that inspired this one and I'd like to give it credit, but I can't find it. Suffice it to say, it used borders to create a really neat quilt. So I did too.

 

I knew I wanted to construct the borders from the fabrics in the 9-Patch blocks and I wanted to intersperse white. I started with the red because I didn't have much left and knew there wouldn't be enough if I saved it for later. Originally, I anticipated no repeats, but midway through I changed my mind. The brown dots were striking and I didn't want to lose them as a powerful frame.

 

I debated backing the quilt with fleece or cotton. This IKEA hippo fabric ultimately won out. I'm considering buying more (if it still exists; it's hard to know with IKEA) and using the hippos as quilt labels, since it would be easy to write on the white part. The red might not look good with every quilt, but I think it would work with a lot of them.

Yellow dots for the binding -- I wanted to think of the binding as another border frame and thus selected a fabric from the center. It also had to coordinate with the red and white hippos, which the yellow does well.

Stipple-quilted, the quilt shrunk and crinkled nicely. (When they say comfort with stipplequilting comes with practice, they (whoever they are!) are right; it's getting much easier.) And on another note altogether,  I do love the little owl in the corner there.

The quilt arrived in Madison, WI this week and Gabriel appears to like it thus far, from afar.