Sloths Quilt

May 06, 2020

Like any quilter who's been on social media for a while, I've seen my share of Elizabeth Hartman patterns done up in a variety of colours and combinations. Frankly, I've always been a bit intimidated by what looks like incredibly complex quilt piecing.

When I was asked to make a quilt with a sloth theme, I wondered what that might look like and as I searched for ideas, I discovered that there actually was a sloth pattern out there!

My only guidelines were sloth theme and the colour purple, so I pulled out a fat quarter pack of purple prints that I had. Each sloth would take one fat quarter of fabric plus the fabric for the faces, tree and the background. And the pattern was a PDF download, which made it super easy to get started.

I had a natural Essex cotton linen for the background and some bark-like fabric left over from another long ago project. I carefully cut out the pieces as directed. And there were a lot of pieces! As you can tell, I used sticky notes to mark which piece was which (highly recommend labelling pieces in some way!)

I sashed and bordered the pretty purple sloths with a purple Kona cotton and sent it off to be quilted by Marie of Blueberry Hill Quilts in High River, Alberta.

Marie chose a beautiful panto of jungle-like leaves which adds a really cool texture and makes it look like the sloths are peeking out through the leaves.

I'm super happy with how easy this all went together. The pattern was really well-written and easy to follow. I'm normally a read through the pattern and then do it my own way kind of quilter, but there was no need to do this for this quilt.

I'm looking forward to making another of Elizabeth's patterns in the near future. I have my eye on this one that will be released later this month for a project for my grand-daughter and I to make together.