My Zebra

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to attend a class with Juliet van der Heijden, who you might know as the Tartan Kiwi. This is what I made - a 20" zebra mini quilt.

We spent the day learning some tips and tricks for foundation paper piecing and working on our zebras.  Our aim was to make Juliet's 20" zebra pattern and by the end of the day we had got this far:

that's Juliet's on the left - the class sample.

I came home and continued to work on mine while I still had the ideas in my head.  I laid out all my greens and yellows and tried to plan each section before I started piecing it. It's quite confusing because everything is mirror image with foundation paper piecing. I wanted to keep the light colours close to the zebra, and the dark colours on the outside edges.  I thought it would look like the zebra was emerging from the bush - not sure if I achieved that or not, but I like it anyway.

I got my zebra assembled without too much unpicking.  I was very happy with my finished zebra, but I didn't know how to quilt him.  I knew he would sit unfinished for years if I waiting until my free motion quilting was up to speed, and I didn't want to hand quilt it due to all the bulky seam allowances.

I've long admired the beautiful quilting Donna Ward does on mini quilts, so asked her if she might quilt my zebra for me. Donna kindly agreed and free motion quilted it for me on her domestic machine.  I'm thrilled with what she did - it's so far beyond anything I could do at the moment.

My zebra now has a hanging sleeve and is ready to hang on the wall. I like to put hanging sleeves at the top and the bottom of my small quilts, because often the bottom edge can be a bit wavy and inserting another wooden rod can keep it hanging straight.

If you want to make your own zebra you can find this pattern in Juliet's Etsy store here
or on Payhip here.

PS a friendly reminder - voting in the Bloggers Quilt Festival starts tomorrow.