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!
