A Girly Turtle Baby Quilt

So what do you do for an as-yet-unnamed baby girl whose mama doesn't like pink and isn't planning to choose any particular colors? Well, Mama did say she was "thinking turtles" for her baby girl, so as you can see I went with that.

I found this turtle image on google, enlarged it, and traced the white areas onto paper to make my templates. The fabrics are all scraps from my stash and I stitched them down with a zig zag stitch. As you can see, I modified the original image. I reshaped the head a little bit and added that bird she's looking up at. I have to admit, I adore this quilt. It is so soft and fluffy and I think the Mama's going to like it, too!

This cute little baby quilt has sure been a lot of work! Everything went well while I was getting the top together, but once I started layering it, I think everything possible went wrong. Instead of layering it and using a binding I used the "pillowcase method". I turned it inside out and sewed the layers together, catching the folded over satin edging in the seam. That, in itself, turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected, but I learned a lot and I think if I did it again it would work better.

The second set of difficulties began when it was completed and washed. I used Warm and Natural, my favorite batting, with light quilting. I've never had any issues at all with this batting before, but this time when I washed it it disintegrated and the cotton became a big ball. Thinking I had quilted it too lightly, I opened a hole in the backing to rip out the ruined batting and replace it, closed the opening, and added more quilting. After the second wash I can tell that the new batting tried to do the same thing again but was hindered by the additional quilting. There are still a few balls of cotton fluff wadded up in there, but it's something I can live with. Like I said, nothing like this has ever happened before. Has anyone else had any problems like this recently with Warm and Natural?