The Nelson Family: Strawberry Shortcake Quilt

My 3rd quilt! Finished April 26, 2025. I had been wanting to make a Strawberry Shortcake quilt for a while! I started collecting/gathering fabrics back in 2024. I ordered two Strawberry Shortcake fabric prints on Etsy, found other strawberry fabric at Hobby Lobby and Walmart, and one Strawberry Shortcake print I had had in my stash since Elisa was a baby! About 6 years ago, I had found a Strawberry Shortcake cut and sew pillow fabric panel for $1 at Goodwill. I snatched it up when I saw it because I knew I would use it someday for something awesome such as this quilt! Also, I'm pretty sure I had a doll that was made from this very same panel.
But what to use for the backing? I searched on Esty and almost bought a vintage Strawberry Shortcake sheet that was quite expensive, but then I found different vintage Strawberry Shortcake sheet that caught my eye on Ebay...it was the exact same sheet I had when I was a kid! Even though the other sheet on Etsy might have (color-wise) matched slightly better, I went with the sheet I found on Ebay because of the nostalgia. Heck, this entire quilt is about my Strawberry Shortcake nostalgia, so it fit in perfectly with the theme! In the past few years Strawberry Shortcake items have really made a comeback, and I couldn't be happier about it! I try to resist the urge to buy up everything Strawberry Shortcake I see haha! But I have a real hard time at 5Below and Hottopic (but especially 5Below) --they have had the best selection of Strawberry Shortcake items so far. 5Below also had these little fabric/cloth Strawberry Shortcake dolls, and I bought all four of them with the intention of using them in my quilt.

I did not follow a pattern of any sort for this quilt--it was all designed by yours truly. All of these fabrics and dolls sat around in my craft room for months before I decided to get a move on making this quilt. Elisa helped out by bugging me about making the quilt--she also likes Strawberry Shortcake. I'm not sure if she likes Strawberry Shortcake because I do, that it's just trendy now, or simply because Strawberry Shortcake is just so cute and fun! Elisa also helped unpick a few of the 5Below dolls and unstuff them. I decided to use the dolls in the corners of the quilt, and then after I finished one, I decided to expand each corner piece by using the backside of the dolls--their names and flowers or strawberries were printed on the back. Most of the time I spent on this quilt was making the strawberries. They weren't hard nor did they even take that long individually--but there were just so many of them! I had to use two different greens for the tops since I didn't have enough of one kind of all of them, but I like the variety. My sewing machine decided now was a good time to act up--I had real problems with the tension. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the tension to even itself out. Very frustrating. Some of the stitching on the strawberries is not optimal, and it made the already long process of quilting even more time-consuming. I used heat n bond to secure each strawberry and their tops in place. I also used it on the corners pieces that I had unpicked or cut out from the dolls. I also used my new thread burner quite a bit in this quilt. I used the burner along the edge of each strawberry top and along the edge of each of the individual pieces harvested from the 5below dolls on the corners. I'm not sure that it was a necessary step (since I later sewed around the edges of each piece), and it did add to my time, but it was very satisfying to do. I laid the pieces out on the floor so I could determine the best design for this quilt. Design-wise, this quilt isn't very complicated, so it was fairly easy to just sew the blocks together. The trim around the corners was the most complicated part of sewing the quilt together, and even that step wasn't that hard. Then, I laid the sheet I had bought on Ebay out on the floor, and realized it was ever so slightly not long enough so I had to unpick some of the seams to get more length. At this step is where I made an error that affected the way the quilt laid--I pulled too tight on the bottom sheet and that made the top warp and bubble in some areas. Oops. Good to know for next quilt.

Now that I had the quilt sewn sandwiched together, I was on to the second half--the actual quilting of the quilt! I have a quilting machine with a free-motion function, which I love to use. I wanted to employ retro tie-quilt technique, so I started the quilting process by tying the corners of each block with red embroidery thread. If I had to do it all over again, I would have placed each tie in the center of the non-strawberry fabric blocks. Then I sewed a straight stitch on all vertical and horizontal seams using clear thread. I ran out halfway through and had to buy more thread, ugh. And now for my favorite part of quilting--free motion meandering stitching. Am I amazing at it? No. But it sure is fun. I used that stitch on all the white parts of the quilt. I may have over-quilted it a bit. But quilting each strawberry in this way made the strawberries puff up a bit. I think it would have been cool to stuff the strawberries just a bit so that they puffed out even more, but since I had used heat n bond (and I had already stitched around them), I wasn't able to. I keep making the same mistake--whatever it is--because the borders on my quilts are always wavy and I have to go around and make tucks and adjustments so it can lay flat. This one turned out a bit wavy too, but not too bad. Then I finished the quilt by binding it with some cute pink fabric. I would like to say I had no issues with the binding, but the tension on my machine was again giving me issues (weird that it didn't when I was free-motion stitching), but I figured finished was better than perfect, so I went ahead and finished the binding (and therefore the quilt!), poor tension and all. Elisa currently has this quilt in her room, its summer now so maybe she can use it more during the winter.

This is the same exact sheet I had as a kid!

The panel I found at Goodwill years ago. She had a backside too, but I couldn't figure out how to incorporate it into the quilt.

I had this same doll as a kid. I even remember the actual finding of her at the thrift store (think I only got a total of 3 new/non-thrift store dolls in my childhood!) and I was so excited about finding her!

These are the 5Below cloth dolls I unpicked and used in each corner of the quilt.

You can see here my original idea for the corner. I thought it was too inconspicuous and meh. I like the larger corners so much better. All of this you see here was unpicked.