A fidget quilt for my Mum

A number of years ago now ( is it sad that I can't remember how many) Mum was diagnosed with Dementia.  Living half a world away I didn't really see the slow decline in her memory I saw it more in big jumps - each time we'd go back to Australia she would be worse and worse, and last years trip back it was by far the biggest change I've seen.  It's such a terrible disease - not just for her, but for those closest to her - especially Dad.  I talk to Dad at least three times a week these days - Mum is often there too but it's really quite impossible to talk to her over Skype - I'm not even sure if she knows I'm there most of the time.  But one thing that's comes up with Dad a lot recently is that Mum just can't sit still - she's always fidgeting with things, getting up and rearranging stuff, putting away stuff so you can never find it again - so one day when I was browsing the internet and saw fidget blankets for people with Alzheime's  I thought that one of those may be good for Mum.  And then I thought about the weighted blankets that I had seen used to try and get kids with ADHD and Autism to settle down and thought - you know I could probably combine those two ideas and make a blanket for Mum that's both weighted and good for fidgeting.  And so the idea for this quilt was born.

As usual the first thing I did was some internet research - what sort of things go onto fidget blankets.  Zippers, buttons, clasps, beads but every blanket I saw was just so ......utilitarian.  ( I was going to say ugly but didn't want to hurt anyones feeling who may have made one of these).  I wanted something pretty, that you want to have lying around your living room.

So I knew now what I didn't want, but what did I want my quilt to look like?  Among all the ugly quilts I did find a couple that I liked. 

What I liked about these quilts was that rather than just having things thrown on randomly all the fidget bits were used to create a big picture.  I knew that that was what I wanted to do.  Now I just needed a picture.  I'm a big fan of Peacocks so I decided to go with that as a theme and found this picture as an inspiration.

For the body of the peacock I wanted to use the sequins that when you rub them in one direction are one colour when when you rub your hand in the opposite direction they change colour.  Those sequins are so fun to play with - I know I could spend hours making patterns and then rubbing them out.  Luckily when I went into Michaels in search of the sequins they just happened to have them in two perfect colour ways.  One is blue sequins that turn to gold and the other has blue'y green sequins that turn to black.

I used the blue sequins to make the body of the peackock.  The sequins came in strips 5 3/8" wide which was not quite wide enough for the bottom of the peacock so I had to sew a strip onto either side.  I did this by abutting the two pieces of fabric and hand stitching them in place. I tried sewing extra sequins over the join but it didn't work very well so the seam is more noticable than I hoped but oh well.

I then used the green sequins as a sort of halo behind the peacock - the base of his feathers.  Again I had to piece a couple of strips together but I was able to hide at least one of the joins.  I sewed the green sequins onto the blue in the same way to create one big piece of sequin fabric.

For the fabrics for the quilts I took a trip to my local discount fabric store where I found a beautiful piece of blue cotton fabric with just 5% lycra in it that I wanted to use as the background for my peacock, plus a bought a number of piece of metallic print batik fabrics in multi colours that I wanted to use for the feathers.  I then bought a coordinating blue flannel fabric for the back of the quilt.

I cut my blue backing fabric to the size I wanted 1 yard x 1 yard and then used heat n bond, applied to the back of the sequin peacock, to join the peacock to the fabric.  I was a bit worried about melting the sequins but did a test run before hand and it worked nicely.  I don't 100% trust it though so I then went back and hand stitched the peacock down around all edges as well.

The next step was to make the feather "eyes".  I sketched out a template for the shape I wanted and cut a couple of eyes out of each of the batik fabrics and scattered then around.  With L as my sounding board I finally decided to just use two of the fabrics. 

One that is brightly coloured with gold swirls and the second in shades of blue with densely printed gold leaves.  I alternated eyes cut from these two fabrics radiating out from the peacock.

To finish each eye I used two layers of the batik fabric joined together right sides facing then turned  inside out so all edges are finished.  The eyes were then sewn to the blanket using free motion quilting with grey thread.  It's not pretty, but you really can't see it.

The next step was to figure out how to add some gadgets to fidget with.  I knew I wanted zippers.  originally I went with a bunch of different colours, but in the end decided to stick with the green.  Thankfully I had three long ones in just the right colour green - I used two full length and cut the second one in half and added a different zipper pull the the second half to make 4 zippers.  To attach them to the blue fabric I ironed the zipper tape under under by 1/4" and simply top stitched them in place.  For the zipper with the slightly different colour pull I added a little owl charm - something else to play with.

At the peacock edge I just cut the zipper tape off and sealed the end with heat and sewed it down, the other end was tucked inside the eye.

On the front right I added three thin pieces of ribbon that can be braided or otherwise played with.

On the front left side I interfaced both sides of the eye and only attached it at the end and added a button and button hole so the eye can be lifted and buttoned.

On each side of the quilt I attached an eye with a piece of thread with 5 beads.  The beads can slide back on forth on their string.

On the second eye on the right side I added a pouch, this is just half of the second eye sewn on top of the first, with the top edge left free.  I then made a little green felt teddie bear by simply drawing the shape I wanted on paper and then stitching around that and cutting it close to the stitching line.  A little bit of hand enbroidery to make a face and then I used the ribbon to cover the ugly knots at the back of his head. 

In the top right hand corner of the quilt I used snaps to make another fidget.  I made another fully interfaced eye and attached  ribbon to the end of it.  The other end of the ribbon I attached to one of the zipper pulls.  On the extra eye I added a male snap and then I added 4 female snaps to 4 eyes around the zipper.  She can slide the zipper up and down and match the free eye up with different stationary eyes.

I happened to have an actual peacock feather lying around do I decided to add that on top of another eye just to give some additional texture.  I used heat n bond to stick the feather down and then stitched the stem down as well.

The final fidget was the peacocks crown.  For this I used wired ribbon and blue fluffy fabric sewn into small pompoms.  I made the 5 little pom poms out of a blue fluffy fabric I had in stash from making baby blankets.  I then started the ribbon at the top of the head  and played out about 2.5" ribbon then sewed on a pompom, bent the ribbon back down to the head then back up to make second stalk, added a second pompom and continued on till I had 5 pom poms.  I then machine stitched the whole crown down at the top of the head leaving the pom poms ends free and pose-able.

To finish off my picture I added a blue sparkly button as an eye and then added a silver bead as the pupil.  And a beak made out of gold faux leather.  I wasn't sure how I was going to attach it - I originally thought heat n bond but I just melted the gold fabric trying that. Thankfully it turned out it wasn't that hard to just machine stitch it on.

Finally I had to add the stalks to attach my feather eyes to the body of the peacock.  I started  with white embroidery thread and used a back stitch to draw a straight line from the peacock to each eye.  I then used standard thread and a running stitch to add the green feathers to each white stalk.  I wish now that I had done it in green embroidery thread but I wasn't sure I'd have enough so chose the normal thread but even doubled up it's not thick enough to stand out.

Now it was time to turn it into a real blanket.  My original plan was to make it a cover for a weighted blanket, but I discussed it with Dad and Mel and they found a weighted blanket that they could buy cheap (and whilst I wouldn't cost me too much to make the weighted blanket it would cost me a bucket to post it to Aus) so they did that and I just made mine a blanket.

I decided to add piping around the blanket to finish the edges and cut it out of the blue with gold leaves batik and added 3mm cord to it.

I then sewed the flannel fabric to the back hand stitching the opening.  I didn't get any photos of the back before I sent it off.  Once it arrives I'll have Dad take a photo and update the post.

 I hope that Mum will get some use out of this - and if not that she likes it as a nice lap blanket to keep her warm in winter.