Alice's Spring Quilt--Raggedy Ann in a Box

I wasn’t even thinking about this current theme when I went into a toy store looking for a baby shower gift.  Suddenly I spied the Jack in the Boxes. Ah ha!  A toy that depends on a spring for it to work! I was delighted to see that instead of a clown popping out, one was a princess and the other was a teddy bear.  (I’ve never cared for clowns!)

I decided to depict Raggedy Ann springing from the box.  My mother made me Ann and Andy dolls one Christmas.  They were some of my favorite childhood gifts. I loved the books on which the dolls are based and read them all.  (I know, I know—my love of books comes up again!) Then some 30 years later, I made our youngest daughter Susan giant Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls.

My own dolls are tattered and torn, missing shoe-button eyes and lower legs!  But Susan’s are still in good shape, and “live” on the day bed in the “grandchildren’s room.”  So with my own pitiful torn-up dolls and these other two, I had plenty of models and came up with a sketch I liked.

I decided to use commercial printed fabrics, rather than the batiks I so often use.  The background is a harlequin-patterned green I used in making one of my great-nephews a quilt.  Ann’s clothes are bits and pieces from my stash that I first prepared with Wonder-Under.  I traced the various elements of my sketch onto the fabrics, using a light-box. After all were cut out, I fused each section onto the green fabric.

I followed the design of the fabric in machine quilting, and I secured the edges of the appliques with a tiny zig-zag stitch.  I thought the yarn hair would be hard, but many handy sites on the Internet helped me out with that.

The dolls from the 1940s and the ones from the 1970s are portrayed in photos on the back of the quilt.