Dwight B Plaid

Another mashup! This time I am combining Elizabeth Hartman's Dwight the Deer pattern with The Fat Quarter Shop's Jelly Roll Check pattern.

Dwight is the focal point of my quilt and I doubled him in size to make him really stand out.  I had a yard of background fabric from the Jelly Roll Check quilt kit, which was more than enough.  The antlers took up an entire fat quarter and the face was most of a half-yard cut of fabric.

I was a little worried that his antlers would look too fat once they were doubled but luckily that wasn't the case.

Next, it was onto the border, which is made from the Jelly Roll Check pattern.  The pattern as written resulted in a lot of unused fabric, so I just went for it and sewed together a giant blob, cutting on the bias to get as many squares as I possibly could!  This worked great, except for the row that I made an inch too narrow.  Ugh.  Next time I'll mark my cutting line on my ruler so it doesn't happen again.

My Dwight was an awkward size - a little too fat for five of the squares but a lot too skinny for six of them (I didn't want a wide border around him).  So I compromised - five blocks that I cut at 6.75" square instead of 6.5" square.  I had to add a one inch border around Dwight, which was just about perfect.  The larger size blocks also fit the height of Dwight with the same border.

It sounds like a lot, but the whole thing actually came together in just a few days.  I opted for a little bit of custom quilting, matching the colors in the center section.  The antlers are done in big ovals and the face is meandered.  Then I did the background in a woodgrain, green for the center section and white for all the borders.

The label is very simple, just a piece of fabric from a different line, but it's one of my favorites (edited for the blog - the actual label has our last names on it too):

My father-in-law got to see the quilt top when he was here for Christmas and he'll get the whole quilt when we see him again next month.  Luckily he's married to a quilter so he understands that things don't always get done on time!  I'm happy to have a few extra weeks to snuggle with this - one of the last little bits of Christmas left now that our tree is down.