I have always LOVED the quilt designs by Elizabeth Hartman but didn’t have a reason to make one. I’m the type of sewist that doesn’t make things just because. Especially when I have to PAY for a pattern. But now I have a new grandson that wears dinosaur patterned clothes and has dinosaur prints on his bedroom wall plus a very cool dinosaur mobile over his dressing table. So I HAVE to make him a dinosaur quilt! Right?

And I purchased the Dinosaurs pattern by Elizabeth Hartman back in August. Love it! But I’ve been procrastinating ever since!

This pattern is all pieced. No appliqué. Which means there are a lot of small bits to the quilt which is a little intimidating but my real problem was picking out 36 different fabrics! I was really overwhelmed.

Kind of like you can’t see the forest for the trees. You gotta take one tree on at a time–I had to take one color, one print, and one dinosaur at a time.

I pulled all of my fabric out of my stash that was orange, yellow, green, or turquoise. There was a bunch. But not enough.

I bought three pieces of fabric when I was in North Dakota at the local quilt shop (LQS) and brought them home to mix and match with the stash I had already carefully “curated”.

I ordered this “Bee Ginghams Bundle” in fat eights designed by Lori Holt from SoJoFabric on Etsy. (The directions for the pattern call for fat quarters but after carefully studying the tutorial I realized that some of the creatures and plants do not need that much fabric.)

I love gingham and was hoping that a few of those prints might work in the Dinosaurs quilt.

And they do!

I bought the six yards of the background fabric at my own LQS, “Beyond the Stitches”. It’s Kona Cotton in Forest. And yesterday went back and purchased some more coordinating prints that I was missing for the quilt.

Anyhow….I was supposed to cut out ALL the fabric pieces first. I just couldn’t do that. Once again–overwhelmed. I ended up slicing up some of the background fabric strips and cutting out the bits for the first dinosaur–the brachiosaurus.

And here’s what that looks like on my cutting table….

This is just for the first block!

After many hours (and mistakes), I finished the first dinosaur!

How cute is this guy? I’m happy with how this one turned out and really excited to start on the next! I gotta start work on it daily since it’s supposed to be done for my grandson for Christmas. Only 23 dinosaurs to go! And how many days? Christmas countdown!