The Very Hungry Caterpillar

I bought two Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt kits from a May/June 2008 Fons and Porter magazine because I thought they were so cute. I had no grandkids at that point and in truth, neither my son nor my daughter were married. Those weddings did not happen until 2011. But I had hope, and bought them anyway. Babies did come along in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018. So here I sit now with five grandkids ages almost 2, 4, 6 on my son's side (two girls then a boy) and ages nearly 5, 7 on my daughter's side (a girl then a boy) and I, in the past twelve years, have still not managed to make up these two kits. Now how do I divvy these two up among five grandkids since any early plans I might have had are out the window? My husband said, "Easy – one for each boy". So my aim is to complete and gift one for a 2nd birthday in April and one for a 5th birthday in July.

Once I started the first kit I realized how simple they really are. Why had I been putting them off? It is a central panel surrounding by several borders. The effort is not in the sewing, but rather in fussy cutting the novelty prints. The central panel of the leaf, butterfly, and caterpillar is not quite squarely rectangular, but nothing that a bit of tugging along the bias could not fix before trimming to the size specified in the instructions.

Before I cut anything I double checked the supplied cutting dimensions by scanning the diagram, enlarging it, printing it out, and noting dimensions directly on it. I did the math to be certain everything added up as it should. It did.

An inner border and an outer border were cut from different sections of the same fabric. Rows of fruit alternated with rows of snacks, separated by a ¼" wide blue stripes. This is also the fabric I used for the backing on the first of the Very Hungry Caterpillar quilts. I ran the length of grain across the width of the quilt, with one horizontal seam. I made sure the seam fell in a white area so no matching was needed and it was well camouflaged.

The inner border was fruit and I cut cautiously, inch by careful inch, along either side of the ¼" wide blue lines separating the rows of fruits and snacks. The blue lines run the length of the fabric parallel to the selvages.



The outer, wider border is snacks.  Again I cut precisely along either side of those blues lines, making sure the border width was as required by the instructions. I am currently on Weight Watchers so working on this quilt does pose a threat of always wanting to take a break for a snack.

Other borders were bright textured tones that read as a solid: green, blue, orange, red. The letter tabs are a specialty marking tool called Alphabitties. I use them to match up with the pattern designations in the kit. The kit called out a fabric description and I assigned it a letter that I attached to the fabric.

The inner corner stones were this purple semi-solid and the larger outer corners were the bold number graphic print in blue or yellow.

The fabric with the colorful circles is what was provided for the binding. I just realized now that those circles are kind of like donut holes. The rounds are the perforations from the fruits and snacks. I guess in theory though, they should be in the caterpillar's tummy.

Much to my surprise, I had one kit cut out and the top made in one day. It took me longer –  a day and a half – to make the binding, piece the backing, and spray baste the backing/batting/top sandwich. The most difficult task for me was crawling around on my hardwood floor to smooth everything out to spray baste it. Since this part of the process is hard on my knees, I moan and groan and grunt as I get up and down. Now I need to FMQ it, which is usually my stalling point on any project. Maybe I can procrastinate by starting to piece the second quilt instead...?