I’ve been holding off for the right moment to share this quilt, and since it’s featured in this month’s issue of Curated Quilts (which has a theme of “Well Said”, featuring quilts that include words or have a message), now seems like a good time.
It’s no secret that I’m totally into dinosaurs—why, I even have two velociraptors for pets.
I was giving out dinosaur temporary tattoos at an event, and someone wanted to know if I’d mind terribly if she asked for four. She had five children, and four sons, and they’d all love a dinosaur sticker.
I had plenty of tattoos, so of course I didn’t mind. But what about her daughter? Didn’t she want a dinosaur sticker, too?
“Oh, that’s okay,” she said.
“I’ll just tell her dinosaurs are for boys.”
Then, at Quilt Market last year, a new dinosaur fabric line was shown to shop owners with “People are always looking for fun boy fabrics!”
When I wear my dinosaur skirt, women stop me on the street to compliment it. Occasionally, they’ll let me know that they’re excited that I’m demonstrating dinosaurs are not just for boys. And sometimes, they’ll lead by asking if I have boys at home. That question threw me for a loop the first time it was asked, because I didn’t understand that they thought my dinosaur skirt was anything other than a reflection of my own interests.
All of this eventually boiled over into this quilt. I can’t believe it has to be said, but:
Incidentally, that’s the official title: “I Can’t Believe I Have To Say This.” They’re dinosaurs! Everyone gets to enjoy the fact that they existed, and while I just made this quilt out of frustration last year, it has taken on special meaning because we’re expecting a little girl to join our family at the end of this month. In what will be a surprise to exactly no one, the nursery has a dinosaur theme (and, of course, when we registered for gifts at Target, we still found half the cute dinosaur-themed baby items to be labeled as “boys”).
So, a bit about the quilt itself:
The dinosaurs are from my Geo Rex paper piecing pattern; I enlarged it by 150% to make the larger dinosaur. I had a variety of low volume fabrics with pink on them that I decided to use for a scrappy background. I rounded the selection out with some gray and gold low volume prints, plus a dinosaur print.
The rest of the background was filled out with improv piecing. Originally, I thought I’d do the text as improv letters too, but I didn’t really like the way a couple of sample letters looked—they felt out of place with the stereotypically “girly” color theme. I eventually decided that the lettering needed to be a script to fit the feeling of the quilt, and I used the same font as for my Sewciopath pattern as a base. My initial thought was to use appliqué, but since I knew I wanted to enter this quilt into QuiltCon (it was rejected, but I plan to try again), I gave some thought to which category it would fit into before getting started. A quilt that involved paper piecing, improv piecing, and appliqué didn’t seem to fit well anywhere, so I decided to bite the bullet and piece the whole thing so it can go in the Piecing category. (Please don’t ask for a pattern for the letters—it was lost when my last computer died an untimely death!)
I was happy to finally get to use the Dear Stella dinosaur prints I impulse bought a while back; the dinos were small enough that I was able to do a little fussy placement inside the letters. (I had to be careful with the white triceratopses since I was afraid they’d blend into the background in weird places.)
My original quilting plan was to just do 1/4″ spaced straight lines everywhere except across the text and dinosaurs, which were ditch-stitched or just outlined. I wanted the bright pink to really pop, so I ventured into trapunto, placing wool batting behind them and stitching around the outlines with water soluble thread. Then, I trimmed the excess away. That was the part of the technique I’d heard was the most frightening, but I have to say it wasn’t that bad. I just approached it with the intention to take my time and go slowly and carefully, and I never felt like I was in danger of clipping the front.
I started with the straight lines, then decided it needed something extra, so I added some swirly flowers.
All in all, I’m so happy in how it turned out, and I’m trying to enter it into a bunch of shows just to get the message out there!
Quilt Stats
Size: 40″ x 50″
Batting: Warm & White with Hobbs Wool for the Trapunto
Thread: Glide 40wt in Cotton Candy
Quilting Stitches: 123,149 at 12 stitches/inch
Love this!
Awesome!!
I love everything about this girl quilt. You couldn’t be more right about this. Girls do love all kind of things. My youngest granddaughter is into bugs, monsters, robots and butterflies! We never coached her what to like, or to be interested in. And we never told her “those are for boys” ,either. I love it that my grandson likes birds, and cats, and to climb trees. Children need different things of interest.
So glad to see your post today. Inspiring! I love the colors and fabrics.
J’adore!!!! It’s absolutely perfect, this quilt. Can’t wait for that baby, either, I expect she will be perfect, too.
I love this quilt and the story behind it and I can’t wait to meet the baby!!!!
I absolutely love this quilt! I have two granddaughters that are dinosaur-crazy and love girly colours! I’m going to buy your T-Rex pattern so I can try and replicate this – unless you plan on a pattern for the whole quilt!
Your quilt is lovely! I had a similar thing happen when I was making a quilt with rocket ships on it for my soon to be born granddaughter. Every single person, EVERY person who saw the quilt thought we were having a grandson! I was shocked and reminded them that girls can be rocket scientists too. Her father was/is an astrophysicist and it seemed an appropriate quilt for any child of his.
Admittedly that was just over twenty years ago but it seems nothing has changed. My sweet revenge was watching my exceedingly bright granddaughter thrive academically and graduate from a prestigious school with degrees in physics and computer science. 😉 Girls like dinosaurs, rockets, science and math…go figure!
I love this! And I’m so excited to hear about a soon-to-be little girl!
The question in my mind is…..how, after seeing this quilt SO many times, did I not realize that the script letters were paper pieced!!!! That is an amazing feat Sylvia!!!
This is amazing on so many levels. I love the message, the colors, the fabrics, the paper pieced dinosaurs, everything. And even better that it comes at a time to welcome a dinosaur-loving little girl! I hope you have lots of luck with this at shows because it really is an obvious but important message.
Beautiful! I like dinosaurs too, and am confused when they are labeled as ” for boys”.
I love this quilt and the “sewciopath” one as well! What font did you use to design the paper pieced letters?
Hi Sylvia
I saw your quilt a PIQF yesterday. It is adorable and timely for me as my 3 & 5yr old granddaughters and their mom are doing their bedroom. Rivers (5) announced they want dinosaurs. Murphy (3) added and tutu’s because that’s how you know they are girls. Do dinosaurs wearing tutus will be forthcoming!
Cj
Love your patterns, I wish this was an option with your Geo-Rex pattern (which I am purchasing to do this!)
Thank you! I am due in early May with a girl and a couple weeks ago I was complaining to my sisters that even when you sort baby items by “unisex” there are rarely dinosaur items! Unisex seems to mean lots of grey arrows and stripes while a majority of dino items are in the “boy” category. This inspired me to populate our registry with lots of dino items and now just a few days ago a friend sent me a photo of your Dinosaurs are for Girls quilt that she took at a quilt convention. So cool! Are you planning to make more of these and maybe even sell them?
Late to the party but wanted to say how much we love this. Anyone remember Della Reese in the movie “Dinosaurs?” We have boys, they love sewing and quilting (age 5 and 7)as well as dinosaurs. If you ever reconstruct the cursive alphabet, looks like a lot of us are eager to use it! Totally great quilt all around. Thanks.