Oliver's Heart Quilt.

This quilt was inspired by this mini quilt -  I'm not sure who the original artist was but a google search brought me to THIS WEBSITE.  

Melissa wanted these two sleepers to be the "focus" of the quilt.  But since the logos are right next to the zippers, we decided that the best thing to do would be to make each onesie into a "half" heart, and then put them together side-by-side to make up a whole heart.     I took out 3 rows of stitches to try to get more room for the heart shape.    

 It still didn't look quite right. . I think because it was the biggest heart and right in the middle.   So then we decided to make them into two separate hearts.  

After some wiggling around,   we came up with THIS design -  I also added some more color, reduced the size of most of the hearts, and used the booties from the sleepers to add depth and more color.    -  much better!  

The top was complete, but I felt it really needed "something". . . so I decided to try to do a Mock Trapunto technique.    I used a thick polyester batting, and densely quilted in the background area and in and around all the hearts and applique shapes.  

I used stippling in the large open areas and pebbling inside the smaller areas inside the heart and around the text.    
Starting from the outside edges first and going around the edges.    I stippled first, and then once I got to the inside of the hearts, I started pebbling.    This pushes all the batting down, and into the open areas.    Then I outlined around each heart, and they magically POOF UP, making it look like you took a long time stuffing each heart or adding extra batting.  

 I didn't have quite enough of the fabric and they were sold out, so I pieced the backing and made it into a double-sided quilt.   

 Here you can see how poofy the applique shapes are - and also the quilting on the back.