Crafty things

 Made a new Barbie house for Jeanie for her 6th birthday.

Got this 4-cube thing off FB, Dad and I put a back on it. 

Stole the pool/frame off the old plastic Barbie house that my girls pretty much instantly broke a month or so ago. 

Dad built a tiny ladder so the Barbies could access their waterslide. 

He also built a storage box to store all the extra accessories.

Painted it all

The finished product, complete with a PVC slide and springy little diving board

Wallpaper from Dollar tree

Bedroom

Bathroom and garage

Living room

 She was super excited when she saw it, wish I had a video, there was a lot of screaming and jumping. Hope they have fun playing and imagining together. 

My second craft of April was a quilt for my new niece Daisy. 

Sad, JoAnns is going out of business, will have to find a new place for material!

My girls had fun giving me the next color to sew together

Started with this pattern, but didn't like it, so had to rip it up. And go back to JoAnns for more fabric.

I liked this simpler look better

Lining up with the back fabric and the batting in the middle

The part I hate, making binding and pinning it on. I always get poked 2-3x no matter how careful I am. 

Done!

I hope she loves it. 

I am really sad that my sister announced she and her family are moving to NC at the end of the year. I hoped having young ones and our aging parents would be incentives for them to put down some roots here. But alas, the travel bug, or desire for sun, or whatever the real reasons are, have overweighed when they said they had initially moved back here from Florida "for family" several years ago. 

So Daisy will have this quilt to remember me by. And maybe future family visits, but even that its quite a drive. I'm sad about it.

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!

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 :)