This one came together so quickly that I didn’t even take progress photos! I made it for my son, who is almost-but-not-quite too old for a critter quilt. Just sneaked it in under the wire 🙂

The pattern was designed by Wendi Gratz of Shiny Happy World and is available in her shop. I highly recommend her Craftsy class, Fusible Appliqué Made Easy, which takes you through it step by step. If you buy the class, the pattern is included with it.

I designed the baby Groot block in the photo above (the little brown guy to the left of the fox) based on the character from Guardians of the Galaxy 2. It’s one of only a handful of movies we managed to drag our son to and we all loved it, so I wanted to commemorate the moment 🙂

The otter, badger, and hedgehog you can see in this photo aren’t part of the original pattern. They were designed by Hannah Louise Todd, who generously shared them with the Shiny Happy People Facebook group.

The appliqué is done with fusible adhesive and then stitched just around the outlines of each piece. The background blocks are already quilted when you attach the appliqué, so it comes together really fast once you get going.

The quilt is backed with super-soft cuddle fleece. It was much easier to work with than I feared it would be. I can offer a tip if you’re using cuddle fleece for the first time: after you quilt it, don’t trim the backing even with the quilt top until after you attach the binding so that the fleece doesn’t curl back as you sew.

I was also a little worried about turning the binding and attaching it to the fleece instead of to a cotton backing, but it was not a problem. I made a little video to show how easy it is and how nice the finished edge looks.

I embroidered the label by hand and attached it with a ladder stitch – also much easier to do on the cuddle fleece than I expected. To make the label, I typed the words on the computer (at a large size, maybe 26 point) and printed them on regular paper. Then I used a lightbox to trace the letters onto a piece of plain grey fabric with a Pigma pen. I embroidered over the letters with two strands of black floss using a straight stitch. I pressed the edges to the back of the patch for a neat finish and stitched it down. Quick and easy!

And that’s it! A fun and fast project!