i made a quilt!

all by myself! for the first time!

(can you tell i'm excited? just a little...)

oh man. this project was so much fun, and i learned a TON about sewing embarking on something i know very little about: the world of quilting. i sort of made a quilt one other time, but had the constant aid of my best friend, Bekah. she is an expert. the quilts she has made are beautiful and perfect. when i was pregnant with my son we took on making him a mini quilt. we picked out the pattern, the material, cut, sewed, and pinned everything together. then she finished all the binding since it was so close to my due date with him. 

but i can't really take any of the credit because she did all the hard work. since she lives 8 hours away now, this time around i was on my own. 

i tend to be a self-starter, in the sense that if i see something i try to figure out how to make it. thank goodness for online tutorials because i wouldn't have gotten very far without them. i did want to choose a simple pattern and color palette so it could grow with her and become a timeless treasure (hopefully!). sticking with solid colors also helped ease my worry of making any mistakes, since they wouldn't be so visible. 

i chose a solid cotton in pale gray for the top, and a solid flannel pale pink for the bottom (for extra softness. also, my daughter doesn't like the feel of sheets, she says they're too crunchy and cold), with an all white binding. i also chose to machine stitch the entire thing. i just DO NOT have the time or patience to hand stitch anything this large. 

for the pattern on top made 4 1/2"x69" strips (twin quilts are 68x86, and by doing horizontal strips that meant i needed LOTS of fabric since a bolt of fabric typically runs 44" in width). then i just sewed them all together. for the bottom, since i wouldn't be seen as much, i made the strips as large as possible to cut back on sewing. i think they're something like 22"x69".

then i used a really thin cotton batting and spent FOREVER pinning that sucker on my living room floor. it was a BEAST! due to time and children running around, i had to roll it up and put it away a few times before finishing all my pinning. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS. my fabric shifted every. single. time. and i had to almost start over pinning. frick. i suggest pinning it all at once if you can. after all that pinning and re-pinning i finally got to sew all the layers together. 

i'm pretty impressed with the binding, if i do say so myself. i used this tutorial for cutting the binding, and this one for machine stitching the binding. 

now that little a's bedding is complete i just need to work on getting her ghetto mattress off the floor and giving her an actual headboard! here are some of my inspirations for what i want her bed/headboard to look like:

Source: etsy.com via Tara on Pinterest

i love this one made out of pallette wood! only i think i would white wash it. 

Source: daffodildesign.com via Tara on Pinterest

this one is my number one fav. i've been scouring Craigslist trying to find one for months with no luck! boo.

Source: squintskids.blogspot.com via Tara on Pinterest

i just love how pretty and rustic this little bed looks.

Source: 4.bp.blogspot.com via Tara on Pinterest

i'm down with painting an old wooden bed in my favorite high gloss colors!

all in all i would totally do this again. in fact, i plan on make two more quilts for my son's bunk beds this summer. i will now be accepting gift cards to Joann's. wink.  

xoxo,

tara