Kat & Cat Quilts: The Panda Quilt

So this is the Panda Quilt. Seems I've gotten decidedly less creative lately with naming my quilts :)

The quilt top is made all from batiks. The panda was paper pieced from TartanKiwi's pattern which I doubled to make a 24" block. The background was made from a jelly roll using Fat Quarter Shop's Jelly Roll Jam II pattern. I was hoping that the background would give the effect of a bamboo forest surrounding the panda.

I did FMQ on the quilt using a variegated blue/green/yellow thread. I made up a design that resembles bamboo, mostly straight lines with little swoops at intervals for the joints. To help it look more random I added a few diagonal pieces in after the rest was done.

I debated whether to do something different over the panda, but in the end I did the same across him, too. I think it looks alright. Kind of like he is peeking from behind the bamboo.

Ironically I used a bamboo batting in this quilt. I scored a whole bolt of it at Tuesday Morning a while back and have been using it in my baby quilts. It is very light and noticeably thinner than Warm and White or Hobbs, which I would normally use, but can still be quilted up to 10" apart, like those. Generally I prefer a slightly heavier quilt, but for babies this is really nice, and it washes and drapes beautifully.

The backing is mostly a pretty teal lawn fabric I've had in my stash (on top in the pic above) which is oh so soft. The finished quilt measures ~ 38"x48" and is listed in my Etsy Shop.