Making a quilt for my boy

 This was my son's sweet little Jenny Lind bed he used from age 2.5 to 8. It was an antique Craigslist find that I refinished the stain myself. We didn't actually know it was a specialty size, and had to have a mattress custom made at a foam store. (It is in between a crib and twin size). He had 2 quilts handmade for him when I was expecting and they were treasured gifts. This one below was made by my Aunt Judy. 

He'd been asking for awhile for a bunk bed, or bigger bed, so we decided to surprise him with one for his birthday. But that meant that he would also need a new quilt as the other ones were more crib sized. 

This winter break we had gone to Utah and the airbnb we stayed at happened to be owned by the quilt stop owner that was under the airbnb apartment. This woman had furnished the bedrooms with all kinds of national park and nature-type quilts and pillows and I just loved it. His bedroom has always been kind of an outdoorsy theme so it was perfect. In her quilt shop she sold quilts, but she also sold the National Park insert sheet, so I just purchased that and kept it in my fabric tote for the future.

October came, with his birthday at the end of it and the plan to get the bigger bed, and I had to get to work!

That top piece with the National Park pictures was what I had purchased from the quilt shop. And it's laying on the batting in the middle, and at the bottom is a big piece of fabric for the backing. A lot of times I just use an old flat sheet for the back, but I wanted something with a pattern, and this year I learned that JoAnns sells a fabric 108" wide, so I wouldn't have to piece it together.

The forest green backing.

I got this blue fabric for the sides, but then decided to add a bit more color blocking. So back to JoAnns!

I got some orange fabric and started measuring and cutting to make a border.

Honestly, I kind of wish I did a yellow instead of the orange. But the yellow at JoAnns had tiny flowers on it, I thought he wouldn't like. I was enjoying texting my Aunt Judy with my quilt's progress and troubleshooting along the way, and she assured me she liked the orange :) and after it's sewn in, it's really too late anyway!

Hours of sewing. 

That big insert piece saved hours though, and I did a lot of long strips, so that made it go a lot faster than a traditional pieced quilt. And when I did the quilting, I just did alternating National Park squares, I didn't do every single one.

The binding is always my least favorite part. But it went pretty well actually. I used a zigzag stitch and didn't seem to miss any of the layers. Although somehow I always mis-measure, and it was back to JoAnns for one more package of bias tape!

Finished!

This surprisingly also took awhile to hand-stitch.

The new loft bed!

Twin-sized still seemed pretty big. A lot of the National Park squares actually are just tucked in. Maybe on a non-loft bed it would just hang off the sides.

Anyway, he loved his new bed. And when I told him that I made the quilt he was very sweet and seemed to really appreciate it. He especially loved seeing his name on it and from mama <3

He was more interested in whatever he was building at the moment than being surprised by his new bed, lol. But he loves it!

Jill's quilt and shower

 My friend Jill is adopting, I couldn't be more excited for her. Her friend was planning her shower so I wanted to help. I was going to be in charge of decorations, gift baskets, advice cards. And on top of that I decided to make her a quilt. There wasn't a ton of notice as how adoptions go, so on our anniversary getaway, we spent a little of it at JoAnn's picking out fabric! I was inspired by this quilt blog pattern I found online. 

Fabric purchased and washed:

Probably my least favorite part is the cutting:

 

Squares ready to sew:

Sewed them alternating white and grey and navy and grey strips

Next sewed the strips to each other

laying it on the batting and backing fabric, no matter how much I measure it never is quite right!

sewing all 3 layers together

Putting on the binding

As careful as I was, this wrinkle still got sewed through several columns, sigh

Overall I was really pleased with it. 

She was thinking it was going to be a baby boy, but now she is unsure so we'll see! It was a very stressful week for me with late nights staying up to finish the quilt and then the shower assisting. I did all the gift basket shopping, that was fun. The advice cards were ordered. But I had planned on one of those balloon arches and little did I know that was going to be so stressful. As it was, I borrowed the balloon blower upper and the arch from co-workers, but the night before the shower I spent hours in the half bathroom blowing up the balloons (the pump was too loud and waking up the baby if I did it in the kitchen!) and part of the arch frame was missing so had to engineer some missing parts with toilet paper tubes! Anyway, with my faithful assistant Doug we got all the balloons blown up and partially assembled. The next day I had borrowed my dad's van and good thing because it was stuffed with balloons, two of which popped while I was driving which was very nerve wracking! 

(kitchen covered with balloons)

We had only about 15 mins to set up, it was held in a very nice restaurant, but the other girls helped me and it got assembled and ended up looking pretty good.

(the "boy" balloon part fell down... was it a sign?!? lol)

It was actually one of the nicest showers I'd been to. It was small and intimate, the food was so amazing and such a nice treat. Flatbread appetizers, I chose the salmon with green beans and dill potatoes for my lunch, and there were dessert shot glasses. Mmmmm. Jill has really kind loving friends and we went around the table talking about how we each knew her and some words of wisdom, and then they did a little "game" about adoption which was informative and interesting. It was a really wonderful shower and so good to celebrate her. I can't wait to meet baby!

The Latest Quilt Project

My brother said his girls were pulling out their quilts made by Aunt Anne Marie and my niece Ellie was like "I don't have one!" I must have made her a knitted hat or something else when she was born, but needless to say, she felt left out and so Joel called and asked if I wouldn't mind making one. 

I had seen this pattern online and I liked it, so I asked if she might like that pattern. Ellie's mom Michelle asked for rainbow colors and with a cat instead, so I got to work!

Got all the fabric from JoAnn's, washed and ironed.

Sewed all the stripes together. 

Laid them all out to find it was too wide for the quilting and backing fabric so I needed to shorten the white strips. Back to the sewing machine!

All three layers get pinned together and sewn. That part always takes a long time. Then the binding all around the edge. Of course after another trip to JoAnns after I ran out of the binding fabric and thread!

Making the cat to applique.

The cat turned out so cute I think!

All done!

August and I just took a long weekend trip to Colorado and was able to give the quilt to Ellie. 

She liked it!

And just for fun, pictures of all the other girls with their quilts.

Isabelle and her quilt.

Molina had the smallest/least detailed, poor girl, guess I wasn't in a very crafty mood when she was born, lol.

And this one that I absolutely love those floral patterns for baby Juliette.

All the kiddos with the quilts behind them :)

A quilt for baby girl

I'd been wanting to make something special for my new baby. I saw this quilt on a girl's instagram and fell in love with these large faded floral patterns.

However, I was reminded that one is limited by the selection of their fabric store. Jo Ann Fabrics did not have a single thing that looked old and faded, and didn't have much by way of large floral prints either. But I did really like this pink and yellow floral pattern, and then picked some other fabrics in corresponding colors.

Step one, washing the fabrics and the dreaded ironing.

Then cutting the squares and sewing them together. This goes pretty quickly when just doing squares.

I don't know why I laid this out and thought it was ok. I ended up having to rip out a bunch of my seams so I could switch the order around to a pattern I liked better.

Sewed on the soft pink velvety fabric for the border.

I used an old soft creamy yellow sheet for my back fabric and sandwiched in the quilting material. Then held down the edges so I could pin and do my machine quilting to sew all 3 layers together. Professional quilters have this awesome table for this purpose, but people like me use the floor!

Trimmed.

Sewing all the lines.

The last step was folding over the velvet part over the back and hand sewing to avoid a visible stitch. This part was a pain and literally painful to the fingers to poke through all the layers. It took several episodes of watching something and stitching all 4 sides. I'm actually not super happy with how it ended up looking kind of pulled there on the sides, but I'm not sure how I could've done it any better.

Here it is all finished.

The back.

Part of me still likes the other girl's more, but I like that mine is handmade by me and I'm sure it will be fine. It is soft and pretty. I really do love that floral print so much I had my mom buy a yard and she is going to make me a new carseat cover out of the same material. So that's nice of her, she had made one for August and I didn't think she'd mind being asked to make a second. 4 more months!