Purdue Quilt

I met my husband in the Purdue Marching Band, and some friends of ours, who also met in the Purdue Band are having a baby.  Naturally, I decided to make them a Purdue quilt, but with a music theme as well to add the band connection.  That, and there were only so many Purdue designs out there and I already had a couple of music designs that were perfect.  The parents-to-be play instruments with one in bass clef and one in treble clef, so I felt like I needed to include both (and as a former cello player myself, I'm partial to having bass clef represented).

The top edge is the same as the rest of the way around, it's just tucked in at the top of a bulletin board so it could be hanging up.  The polka dot border fabric is old gold, with metallic gold dots.  It doesn't show well in pictures, but the polka dots reflect the light really well.

I embroidered each of the white squares.  Each design on the body of the quilt was used three times, but each one is slightly different.  For those with applique work (both trains, the block P, and the Big Bass Drum), each one has a different background fabric.  With the exception of the bass drum, I also changed up the thread colors for each design, using only black, old gold, white, silver, and dark grey.  For the treble and bass clefs, I mixed up which parts were black and which were gold, to make each one (of the same clef) different.  It is hard to see here, but the "Purdue" at the top is appliqued with a black and old gold paisley fabric.

Once all the embroidery was done, the rest went together really quickly.  It is really more of a blanket with a pieced top than a quilt, since there is no batting, but it is super soft and cuddly with an ultra cuddle fabric backing.  The "quilting" is done mostly to keep things from shifting, but it isn't quilted close together since there isn't any batting to ball up inside.

 Not the greatest, but a small close-up of the Big Bass Drum.  It's tiny, but it really does say, "World's Largest Drum" in the arc at the top.  I love how this design turned out, but oh boy is it a pain to clip the million (tiny) thread jumps it has.  I'm planning one more thing with this design, then I think I will need to put it away for awhile so I can forget how many little snips it needs.

 I really liked getting to do this logo, which I believe has been changed very recently by Nike.

 This is some old (discontinued) Purdue fabric I bought back when my son was about a year old.  I had enough left from the longalls I made him to do the quilt.  I like this one with Purdue Pete better than the current version that's for sale that replaced Pete with a basketball and basketball hoop.

The squares that appear plain black are actually this cute black-on-black music fabric.  There are tiny little music notes between the treble clefs.  The other fabric I used in the quilt is just black with small, irregular white dots.  It isn't Purdue or music themed, but I liked how it tied the white squares in with the white dots.  There is also a bit of a polka dot repeating pattern in the quilt, and I liked being able to carry that out.



Even though I had a sketch ahead of time, I wasn't sure how it was going to look until this one was nearly done.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and I sort of want one a giant one for myself so I can snuggle under it on the couch.