This quilt was created for my nephew Jude. He and my son are only six months apart in age, so poor Jude didn’t get a baby quilt when he was born like his older sister did. As partial compensation for a baby quilt delivered 17 years late, I asked him for his input on the design of the quilt. He said he liked grey and orange and foxes, so Jude’s Foxes was born. I presented the quilt to him in July 2017.

I designed the quilt myself in Electric Quilt 7 (EQ7). It measures about 36″ x 56″. The wakeful foxes are adapted from a design by Rachel (Fox) Reitz (used with her permission) and the sleeping fox is my design. I adapted crazy quilt blocks from EQ7 for the grey parts of the quilt and drew the stripes myself. I’ll post about each step of the process separately so you can see how I designed and constructed the quilt.

Two lines of large quilted circles divide the quilt into three sections: the darkest fabric at the bottom, the medium greys in the middle, and the lightest greys at the top. The bottom is quilted with an echoing leaf design; the middle, with stacked circles divided by wavy lines; and the top, with echoing swirls. Each orange stripe, including the flying geese on the right of the quilt, features a different quilting design.

The foxes are appliquéd by machine using a gray thread that shows just a little, and echoed with a quilted border very close to the appliqué. The eyes and noses are embroidered.

I pieced and quilted it on my two home sit-down machines. Right now, it’s entered in the Sonoma County Fair, where it will be on display from August 3-13, 2017. After that I’ll send it off to Jude!