When I got ready to quilt this piece, I started with all of the animals, making sure that I stitched around EVERY…SINGLE….PIECE….OF….FABRIC.

It was fiddly, and there were TONS of thread changes, starts and stops!!

I wanted to do something special on the path, so I started out with oval “stones”…three across the path. Then I decided that it needed more, so I went back in and added another “stone” in the middle of each. I liked the final result…..

For the trees and leaves, I just outlined them and then added a bit of filler quilting….

….and did a wavy “U-turn” in the sky…..

But, the stars of this quilt are the fun animals….

Jenny requested that the quilt be named for the baby, so “Sutton’s Storybook Grove” is the winner…..

Although I had to rush to get it finished in time, I thoroughly enjoyed the process and LOVE the finished quilt. Jenny told me that, when the new Mom opened the gift, she declared it absolutely PERFECT!!

So, which animal is your favorite?

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When we left the baby quilt last week, I had finished all of the background….

Now it was time to start adding the book-reading animals. I was SO excited!!

The first one that I did was the Owl sitting in the tree….

I chose to use Wonder-Under to prep the animals, trying to only stick it to the edges of the design.

I prepped each animal or group individually, adding them one at a time to the quilt top….

I knew that it was going to need something else to the right and top so I added some roughly cut-out pine trees.

Then it was time to square up the top…not something that I particularly enjoy!

I laid it out on my cutting table…..

….and played with it for a few minutes. Then I grabbed my Laser Square…..

….and quickly cleaned up two of the edges…..

The other two sides were equally easy to square up and it went up on the wall for a final look…..

I noticed that the racoon seemed to blend into the background, so I carefully pried up the fused edges and added a lighter color of fabric underneath…..

Now it looks like he is sitting on a rug!!

I quickly basted it….

As I was cleaning up my studio, I found another tree that I hadn’t used, and it HAD to be added to the top….

Come back tomorrow and see the full reveal!!