Franny's Rainbow Quilt

Franny has been asking for a "rainbow quilt" since before Christmas. After Sophie got one for her birthday and Bobby got one for Christmas, I guess Franny wanted in on the fun. Bobby found this video online and the girls love it. Ever since then Franny's been a big fan of rainbows. In fact, right after Christmas we took the whole family to Walmart for a shopping trip. We were hurrying past the fabric section and Franny spotted a fleece she liked with a rainbow pattern. She called me over and said, "Mommy! Mommy! For my rainbow quilt!" It was so cute. I didn't end up using the fleece, but luckily Walmart actually had a cotton fabric with a rainbow pattern that Franny liked even more. The rest of the fabric just came from my stash. Again, I borrowed the idea from a quilt from the Red Pepper Quilt lady. I love her style.

This is the first time I've ever met a deadline when finishing a quilt. It took about a week start to finish. I think it measures about 4 feet by 6 feet. I quilted it using my regular sewing machine. I bought a walking foot, but I haven't been able to figure it out. I just picked some random spots on the quilt and worked outward in kind of a rectangular spiral until it was all quilted.

We gave it to her after cake and ice cream on her birthday. I was so glad we had gifts wrapped and the quilt finished because the poor kid was pretty sick on her birthday and watching her open her gifts was the first time I saw her really excited the whole day. For a while she kept telling me, "Mom, I really love my quilt." She still does say that occasionally. Little sweetheart.


Poor little sicko.
A couple of extra shots from her birthday. We took her to school even though she was sick just to share cupcakes with her friends. She was so excited about it- I just couldn't bare for her not to go. The rosettes were fun to make. I just bought the fondant, dyed it with food coloring, and followed these instructions from Bakerella.

Bobby's Christmas Quilt

This last Christmas Bobby asked me for a quilt. I've always really appreciated how supportive he is of the things I like to do with my time. Like my cooking, and that very short time that I was into scrapbooking, and my sewing... So when he asked for a quilt, I was pretty excited. And lest anyone should question the manliness of my man, he also asked for a gun-cleaning kit. ;)

He had some suggestions for me. He wanted me to incorporate some other fabrics besides cotton, namely corduroy and felt. (Don't worry, I let him know that felt for a quilt would be a bad idea.) He wanted it to look kind of pieced from my fabric stash, but still look cohesive. (These are not his words. Keep in mind this conversation happened about three months ago.) So I started searching craft blogs and flickr pages looking for inspiration and I ran into this lady. (Hello lady!) I love her quilts. Some of hers look really advanced, but a lot are really fresh and simple. I actually borrowed an idea from her for Franny's birthday quilt, which I'll blog about soon.


The quilt measures 84 x 68 inches. He wanted it to be nice and big enough to cover his whole body. I used a chocolate brown corduroy on the front and I'm happy with the added weight it gives the quilt. I also loved the puckery look on the corduroy after it was washed a couple of times. My only complaint about the corduroy is it stinks. It smells awful, but it's getting better with every wash. After the first wash I was laying around with it watching TV and I could barely breathe because its smell was so strong. Anyone know what that is?
My favorite side of the quilt is actually the back, only because it's such a surprise. It was obviously a lot more work, but the front was so simple to put together I didn't mind the extra time. I sewed straight vertical lines to quilt it about 1 1/2 inches apart and that took much longer than I anticipated. But quilting always does.

I couldn't decide which fabric to use for the binding so I finally settled on a scrappy binding, and just used a combination of all the fabrics from the quilt.

I didn't actually get the quilt finished in time for Christmas. (I was up until 1 AM quilting it on Christmas Eve.) But it was done by December 28th which is a lot better than that time it took me three years to get my friend Betsy's daughter her "baby" quilt. So maybe I'm getting better at judging how much time I need for a quilt. He uses it all the time and has told me repeatedly how much he loves it. Bobby, you're the best!

girl gone craf-T again

So I have a craft blog that I haven't updated for months and months. I'm thinking of just importing all of my posts from that site to this one since I'll probably never be able to really do it justice. I do have little chunks of time here and there where I keep really busy with crafting projects, like the recent few months I guess, but I think that this chunk of time is rapidly approaching its end with the new baby coming soon. (Although I am hoping to make some crib bedding, hair accessories, baby blankets/onesies, etc.) So I have decided to post my crafting efforts here when and if they come up.

I made this quilt for my sister Julia for coming out to Missouri to babysit my kiddos for four or five days while we were on our cruise. It's called a wonky log cabin quilt and my friend Sara was the first one to tell me about it. I just love pink and red together.

I saw this on Ashley's blog who found it on the Little Blue Boo blog and thought my cute nephew and niece Hannah and Warner needed one with a matching blanket.


Then I also made a couple of headbands for Hannah. I am totally going to make some for Claire and may even make some hair clips for Sophie and Franny featuring these little felt roses. I love them!