Donna's tree quilt

Donna brought me this amazing quilt that her granddaughter had designed. It was made up entirely of her baby clothes! Even the green grass and the tree.

She asked for custom quilting with lots of fun stuff. Quilt it like you would for your own kids, she said.

And look at all that open space! Oh, the potential!

What I thought was really unusual was the space under the tree. Most quilters might have cut the quilt off at the base of the tree. It was the perfect place for an underground extravaganza! So I set to work with a rough sketch of what it might look like under there. Maybe with some bunnies and chipmunks.

Here are the bunnies and a little chipmunk with an acorn. I saw an underground cut out image on a kid's website that gave me the idea for burrows. I was going to McTavish the tree roots, but I was worried they would get lost in the background, so I left them unquilted.

The leopard print at the base of the tree is an ant hill. You can see the little red embroidered ants going up into the hole. So of course it need tunnels underneath.

Here's the other side, with a little snake slithering down the tunnel.

I thought the sky lent itself really well to swirls, but I threw in a few extras to spice it up. Clouds...

Birds...

The sun...

Donna had also sewn on these little snowflake patches at the top of the quilt, so I turned them into flowers.

Some of the clouds had raindrops.

I was getting bored with clouds, so I threw in a hot air balloon race.

More birds...

I also extended the grass out in both directions and quilted a few flowers and butterflies.

Isn't that cute? Donna included the embroidered flowers from the baby clothes.

 Close up of the ant hill.

 Close up of the burrows.

Thanks so much Donna! This was a great quilt to get the creative quilting juices flowing:)