Hey friends!
You ready for a hippo quilt tutorial? Here we go!
I am going to walk you through one block. I made my quilt 3 blocks wide and 4 blocks tall and it came out a perfect crib/toddler bed size at 44"w x 56"l.
I am going to give you the directions for how I did my turned edge appliqués in the following steps. This is a great source for other ways to do turned edge appliqué. Use whatever method you like best.
You will need one 15.5"x15.5" square of of fabric for the background. I used a fat quarter for each background.
For the hippo you need a piece of scrap about 16"w x 10"t. I used another fat quarter.
You will also need some scrap pieces of black fleece around 2"x3" for the eyes and nostrils. You could also embroider on the eyes and nose by hand, or use fabric paint (I like Tulip Slick
), or do any number of other options. Your choice!
Finally you will need basic sewing supplies including matching thread, a washable/disappearing transfer pen/pencil (I like FriXion
), and fabric glue for the face pieces (I like Unique Stitch
).
1) Cut your background fabric to be a 15.5" x 15.5" square.
2) Download Maverick's Hippo Quilt Pattern, I recommend using printable freezer paper like this
. I even included 2 ears on the pattern so you have 2 ready to go. Otherwise, print out the pattern on regular paper, then trace it onto freezer paper. Either way, cut out all pattern pieces from your freezer paper.
3) Cut out your eyes and nostrils from the fleece.
4) With the shiny side of the paper facing the wrong side of your hippo fabric, press the freezer paper with your iron to attach it to your hippo fabric. Trim around the pieces leaving roughly a 1/4" seam allowances on all sides.
5) Trim into all of the curves on the pattern to about 1/8" away from the paper. Wet the raw edges of fabric paper with spray starch. I used this one.
6) Press the edges in around the freezer paper, making sure to get right up to the paper to get the shape of the appliqués perfect. I started with my regular iron and immediately scalded my fingers, so I hopped on amazon and immediately ordered this mini iron
, which worked like magic. No more scalded fingers.
7) Once you have all of the edges pressed to the back of the hippo parts, press the whole thing again from the front side, this time with a regular sized iron, to make sure everything is laying very flat. Make sure to transfer all of the marks from the pattern to your fabric, I put the eyes and nostrils on now with some fabric glue.
8) Find the center of your background fabric: fold it in half hot-dog style. Then fold it hamburger style. "X" marks the center! I press the corner when I do this to make the center cross super apparent.
9) Gently remove the freezer paper from the hippo pieces. Supposedly you can re-use it, but I ended up cutting one freezer paper template for each of the hippos in my quilt. Match up the mark on the hippo body with the center of your background and pin it in place. Using matching thread, topstitch around the edge of your hippo body, about 1/8" from the edge. Alternately you can use a zig-zag stitch, satin stitch, blanket stitch, or blind stitch to sew around the edges of your appliqués. I tried several different methods and liked the look of just topstitch around the hippos best. Also, since mine is a crib quilt I knew it would be getting a bunch of washing, so I figured just topstitching would make it fairly sturdy.
10) Once you have sewn around the body, place the head or the head pattern piece on the background, using the mark on the body to position it. Then, using the placement marks on the head, place the ears on the background fabric and pin ears in place. Remove the head for now and topstitch around the ears. (If you want to be really tricky you can do this step before sewing down the body, then sew both the ears and the body at the same time!)
11) Place the head back on the background fabric, again positioning using the mark on the body. Pin in place and topstitch around.
12) Topstitch around eyes and nostrils. Embroider them on or use fabric paint now if you prefer.
13) If you used the FriXion pen, you can remove all marks using your iron now. Or, be lazy and wait to wash your block to remove the marks.
Tah-dah! Finished block! Now make as many more as you want to make your quilt. Like I said mine is 3x4 for a total of 12 blocks for crib sized. 4x5 would make about a 60"w x 75"l lap/twin size
For your back I ordered 2 yards of the cute hippo fabric online and then realized I didn't quite enough. I love pieced backs anyways, so I found some texturey blue fabric at a local quilt shop and grabbed 2 more yards. I cut two 10.5w x 65"l hippo strips for the sides, one 9.5"w x 65"l hippo strip for the center, and two 9.5"w x 65"l blue texture strips. I sewed those together (10.5" strips on the outside) to get my back. You could certainly get away with a bit less yardage if you just ordered the right amount of one color! You would need around 3 and 5/8 yards.
My batting was a bamboo blend since I wanted to try it. It is lovely and fairly drapey and completely snuggly.
For quilting I decided I didn't want to quilt on the hippos. So, I ran down the seam, then lined up that seam up to the edge of the foot on my machine, and ran another line. Then did that again. On each side (5 lines total). That sounds complicated typing it, but it really wasn't, which is why I chose to do it! So, on every seam in the quilt there is a line of stitching on the seam, then 2 to each side of the seam. Makes sense, right? Also, I used a black and gray variegated cotton quilting thread, which you can't really see too much.
I ended up using about 2/3 of a yard of fabric for the binding. My binding I cut at 4" wide (I like big bindings, and I cannot lie...). I needed just over 200" so I did 5 strips from my 42/44" wide fabric so I would have plenty extra. I sewed it on and then finished it by folding it around to the back and pinning it in place. Then I ran a zig-zag stitch around the front of the quilt so the zig hit the binding and the zag hit the quilt. I did it in yellow to match my binding. I think it looks cute. Sometimes I do the hidden machine finish where you run in the ditch on the front and see it on the back, but I decided I didn't want to hide the fact it was machine done on this guy.
M'kay, I think that covers it. This is my first time doing a quilt tutorial, so I hope it makes sense! If you make one, share it with me! (Not so into it but I am going to start this #hastag thing, you ready?) If you make a quilt share it on social media with the hashtag #mavshippoquilt. (Am I doing this right?!)
Thanks for visiting me!
). The batting is left over bamboo blend. Binding is another Cotton + Steel fat quarter. Did a zig-zag stitch to finish my binding like on my hippo quilt. 
)
