It's a Sloth Kinda Day: My Flannel Sloth Quilt, Part 1 (Designing and Piecing)

Did you know February 10 was National Flannel Day?

Probably not, because WHY in the world would that be relevant to you?? 😂 

Hear me out. It's the middle of winter and we've had another big winter storm raging outside our front door all week. Everyone is buried under homework, battling seasonal depression, and desperately praying for the sun to shine just a little warmer. 

Our choices are either: 1) succumb to the depression and darkness, or 2) launch a search for shiny new things, however tiny, to celebrate and make life a little brighter while we wait for winter to end. 

Enter: Random Unofficial Holidays that Nobody Cares About!! 😊 

Thus this blog post is in honor of National Flannel Day (plus or minus 10 business days cuz that's how long it takes me to write a full blog post between all the other life responsibilities 😅). If you're anything like me, the word "flannel" means the kind of cozy red lumberjack shirt that you snitch from your brand-new college boyfriend and refuse to give back. Not that I would know anything about that... 😏 Seven years later, I definitely have NOT given it back and still have that cozy red shirt I stole from Josh hanging in my closet today. Those pokey braces are long gone, though!! 😁

Flannel shirts are cool and all, but did you know that "flannel" is just the name of a super soft fabric? And that you can make a quilt out of flannel, too? And the result is the COZIEST quilt you could ever imagine!! The remainder of this blog post is gonna be a deluge of pictures from the process of designing a pattern for and stitching together one of my favorite quilt projects last year, made from the cutest little flannel sloth fabric.

Step 1: Choose an Animal "Theme"

This project started when my former college roommate (and eventually my bridesmaid) got pregnant, and I wanted to give her a baby gift. And in my world, that means a quilt. One tiny problem: this mama was a missionary wayyyyy far away down in Peru. So I wanted to make sure this quilt was EXACTLY what she wanted before sending it halfway across the world!! I texted her asking for ideas of what she would want and she got super excited. 

This mama's one request was that my quilt showcase a cute animal, but only ONE type of animal, which would then establish a specific animal "theme" for her kiddo's nursery. And her first baby already took the elephant theme, so elephants were off the table. Anything but elephants.

Mission accepted!! So I scoured two different fabric stores and snapped pictures of all the cutest animal nursery flannels I could find. Flooded my friend's inbox with a million pictures of flannel fabric. "This one?" "How about this one?" "OOH ACTUALLY THIS ONE." You get the idea. If anyone ever spies on our messages, they will find themselves positively drowning in fuzzy flannel pics. 😅 

Dinosaurs, anyone?

My personal favorite— I may or may not have been secretly hoping my friend would pick this one. Aren't the baby foxes so cute?? I might just have to go back and make a quilt from these for myself at some point. 😊 This fabric is named "Sweet Foxes" at Joann's. (For as long as Joann's is still open... 👀)

And, of course, here's the one that won my friend's heart and actually came home with me: 

Cute little baby sloths hangin' out on some yummy leaves!! 

Step 2: Buy Cozy Fabric

This flannel is called "Sleepy Sloths" at Hobby Lobby. I don't remember exactly how much I bought, but I know it was quite a few yards! I wanted to have enough to entirely cover the back of the quilt, while also leaving enough fabric to cut out sloths for the front of the quilt too.

With a bundle of sloths under my arm, I was officially invested now. I didn't have a full plan yet, but I knew I would need some sort of accent fabric. The green was easy— I immediately found the perfect sage green fabric to match the leaves.

And then I knew that I wanted brown fabric too, to match the sloths' fur, but I kept wavering between all my options... which finally led me to the idea of a "scrappy" brown collection! But since I didn't have a big enough fabric stash at home yet to make a "true" scrappy quilt, I started picking up 1/4 yard pieces of different brown fabrics wherever I went— which primarily means Hobby Lobby, Joann's, and Walmart. Most of my sewing happens on a box-store-sales kinda budget!! 😅 Pay attention to how the fabric physically feels when you touch it (scratchy fabric = scratchy quilt), but other than that you don't actually need the highest-tier fancy expensive fabric and equipment to still be able to make pretty, heirloom-worthy projects!! 😊

Step 3: Make a Plan

I laid out all my fabrics on our dining table (aka my craft table), and then just stared. For probably two weeks. I had no idea what to do next!! Finally, since I knew the sloths were gonna need to be "fussy cut", I started with them.

"Fussy cutting" is a fancy way of saying that I specifically cut the fabric in a certain way so the sloths would show up correctly once I sewed everything together (the alternative being... headless sloths and the like 😂). It's called "fussy" because it's literally a fussy process that is very time-consuming and headache-inducing when you're trying to squeeze the most value out of a small piece of fabric without chopping off any sloth heads in the meantime.

I was starting to develop an idea of what I wanted the actual quilt pattern to look like. I wanted to highlight the sloths by "framing" them with boxes. And it made sense in my brain for the boxes to be green, since would make a green "blob" around the sloths, kinda like we would see if the sloths were up in trees among the green leaves (does that makes sense?? Sometimes the ideas in my brain are hard to explain in real life...). 

So I got really excited, starting stitching a bunch of green boxes to go around all the sloths, and then realized... I hate it.

Every time I looked at the design laid out on my sewing table, my eyes were drawn to the dark brown pieces of accent fabric, not the sloths. And the sloths were supposed to be the focus!!

Something wasn't right and I wasn't sure if I could fix it, and I may or may not have started panicking because I had already promised this quilt to a friend and I wanted it to be P.E.R.F.E.C.T. for her, and now I wasn't sure if I would even be able to make something that I was happy with!!

Deep breaths. It's just fabric. It's okay if not EVERYTHING is perfect ALL the time. My friend will literally love a blanket made by me no matter what it looks like. I can do this.

Okay, back to the drawing board. I started messing around with different layouts, trying to troubleshoot what went wrong and figure out what the heck this quilt was gonna look like since Plan A was a bust. Sloths in green boxes? Sloths in brown boxes? Maybe boxes are dumb and I should make stars instead??? I was struggling, okay??!! 😅

After a few days of comparing photos of different design ideas, I finally realized that my eyes were never gonna stop being drawn to the darkest fabrics— the browns. So if I moved the brown pieces to be next to the sloths, then my eyes would naturally be drawn towards the sloths and not away from them.

And also, if I removed the darkest and reddest of the brown fabrics, that would simplify the color values in the quilt and reduce the distractions even more.

Step 4: Stitch All the Pieces Together

Finally I had a solid plan!! Next up: lots of "chain piecing", which is a fancy way of saying that I lined up all the pieces needing to be sewn as if they were a little army and then stitched them all, one after another, without stopping. 

Chain piecing saves time and thread, especially for a major project like this! In this photo you can see my little army of quilt pieces marching off my sewing machine. And you can also see my stack of little brown boxes growing in the background.

Stitch, press, repeat. Lay out all the puzzle pieces and cross my fingers. Does it still look good??

Yes!! Brown boxes was definitely the right choice. But I still felt like something was missing— all the empty green spaces were a bit boring. Enter more tiny little brown triangles to add visual interest: 

...and that's the very long-winded story of how my sloth quilt pattern was officially born!! And by "pattern", I definitely mean lots of barely-legible scribbles on multiple pieces of graph paper. Maybe someday I'll actually type it up into an official pattern... 😆 

I made 20 blocks like this, 4 across and 5 down. Sorry, I wish I had a better photo of all the blocks at this stage of the project!!

But the plus side of using this photo here is that I get a chance to show you what my little crafting space looks like. And tell you that you don't have to have all the fancy bells and whistles to be able to make quality heirlooms. And thank goodness for that, because I definitely don't have a fancy color-coded, Pinterest-worthy, designer craft room!!

My sewing machine was gifted to me by my sister and sits atop a $25 plastic folding table from Target. Our dining table (inherited from my grandparents) serves dual purpose as my craft table as well. My iron *may or may not* be an item which I conveniently never returned to my parents' house after bringing it to college with me, and with it I still use a very stained mini ironing board my mom found for me at Goodwill when I was moving away for college eight years ago.

See that white cubby shelf in the corner? I definitely rescued that from our apartment's Bermuda Triangle next to the dumpsters!! And on that shelf, all my quilty projects-in-progress are organized into repurposed Amazon boxes and Whole Foods paper grocery bags.

Maybe someday I'll have a craft room that is the picture of perfection, but likely not. And that's okay!! I care more about learning new skills and making quality projects than I do about "fitting in" on Pinterest. So if you're interested in crafting, or learning any new skill, this is my encouragement to you to just start where you are right now. You don't have to "look the part" first. Jump in with both feet and just start teaching yourself how to do the crafty things, one step at a time. You got this! 😊

Meanwhile, I'll be throwing together some more quilt pictures for a Part 2 so you can see the end stages of quilting and binding this cozy little Sloth Quilt. See you soon!!

Bonjé

P.S. Spill the tea!! What new skill are you interested in learning next? Lemme know in the comments below!