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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Pinterest Challenge: Project #3

This is... sort of an incomplete project.
It all started with my chevron rug obsession for Baby P's room. When I decided a rug would be too much for his room... and I saw this on pinterest:


I knew what to do. I was going to make a chevron quilt for my baby. But I wanted it black and white. Can you make a black and white baby quilt? Grandma Sass would say adamantly, NO. But I say... why not? Aren't babies supposed to be stimulated by black and white patterns or something?
Yeah, I've totally been reading my baby books, can you tell? Someone is a prepared mama.
But back to the quilt... I tried to figure out if straight black and white would be too boring? (it would.)
I didn't want to add a lot of color/print (mostly because I didn't want to pick something out, and i wanted high contrast) but when I was at the fabric store I found this white on white print with different size dots on it... they looked like bubbles, I loved it... but they didn't have enough of it, AND it was stained on top of that. UGH. So I settled for a small white on white dot print that was similar. I bought my black and I was ready to go.
I have to admit, this project made me really nervous. Even though I have a couple baby quilts under my belt, the only time I have pieced together a quilt top like this was with my grandma, who passed away almost two years ago now. I was a little bit scared about my skill level in completing the process... but also about my emotional level. It took me a few days to power through it, I am not going to lie, I stopped for a cry break once or twice (but that could also be prego hormone related, who knows?). But I had Granny's cutting mat and quilt square/ruler things... so I felt confident. :)
Once I was home and cutting a million little squares I was all, "Meh, this is boring" UGH. Too much little dot going on, needed more interest. So I went to a DIFFERENT fabric store where I found some large white on white polka dots. Perfect!

 So here are all 126 blocks cut out and stacked up ready to be laid out. I laid it out across the bed in the basement/spare bedroom. It was bigger than I thought it would be. My husband came home and said, whoa did you mean for it to be that big? My mom came over and said, whoa, did you mean for it to be that big? No... I guess I didn't know how big it would be. The pattern said crib size which I was assuming was the yard-point-five-ish size blankets my grandma always made, but I guess crib size is 45x60 in case you were wondering and that's big.

My mom came over for our weekly date, and she quilted away on her Baby P quilt, and I worked on mine. Oh, man, I love my serger. I was flying through this thing. I don't know what the official stance is for quilters and sergers vs. sewing... but the serger was awesome and FAST. And I am all for awesome and fast. Plus, Granny made all her quilts with a serger... so if I am doing it wrong, I'm doing it wrong like Grandma! (And I am totally okay with that.)

Then, because this was done on point, I had all these little triangles to trim off the edges. (And the trimmed portions were just like bunting, Erin, you would have been so excited! :) haha) And my mom insisted on including me in the pic, because she is all... you will want pictures of you working on your baby's quilt someday for the memories, and I am all... but won't I have the quilt for the memories? Anyway, here's a pic of good ol' prego me cutting away. Yay. (and please try to ignore the unmade bed-- it was holding the quilt pieces-- and the laundry in the background.)

And... then I had a quilt top! Which is as far as this post is going to take you, because that's as far as my pinterest inspiration/tutorial took me.

Here's a close up so you can see the different dot patterns (and not judge my 'slightly off' row there toward the top... or the fact that it's kinda wrinkly, but, hey once it's quilted you want it to wrinkle anyhow, right?)
Soooooo... now all I have to do is figure out how I want to quilt the thing (anyone experienced have suggestions? I don't think I want to do stippling... I am still undecided about what to do.)
Anywho... there is the top for Baby P's Chevron quilt from Mama! I will, of course, post pictures when it is fully complete.
Pinterest Challenge #3? Check!

And be sure to check out the rest of the Pinterest Challenge projects and Amy Lee, Erin, Jessica and Stacia... some of them I have featured, some of them just keep posting more and more great stuff on their blogs! Awesome, no?

7 comments:

  1. You will have the cutest nursery of all time. I love this! You know Baby P will be extra smart, because he'll be having his little brain stimulated as he gazes at the quilt.

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  2. SO how come I didn't get the scraps from this quit? :)

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  3. Haha, you can have them, Erin, But I set them aside becuase I had a ton of extra blocks and I am considering making a stroller size blanket with them... so I wasn't quite done. :)

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  4. You could always stitch in the ditch. Pretty easy and you just follow the lines of your quilt.

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  5. Thats kinda what I'm thinking, Jess.

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  6. OH my word. There aren't words to express how much I love this. I love this. Okay. However you quilt it (or you might already be done) it will be amazing. I'm glad your mom took a picture of you working on it, I really think you will want that someday. Finally - my grandma made an amazing quilt for Ben when he was born and it is "crib size" and it's the same size! So big! I love it, though, because he's 3 and not in a crib and he uses it every night! The end!

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