Project: Baby Girl Quilt (a few months too late)

I feel terrible that this quilt is finally being worked on- It was supposed to be fast and before my friend's baby arrived... BUT, so much changed from when I was going to get it done until now (a BIG move, a crazy pregnancy, and some pressing jobs). Now I get to work on it. These colors are what I planned on working with as soon as she picked out this quilt. I bought the "skinny strips"* from Missouri Star Quilt Company (*"skinny strips" are just 1 1/2" strips). I love the colors and the design isn't that difficult. The pattern is free as well:(http://www.robertkaufman.com/quilting/quilts_patterns/kite_flight/)

The one pictured above was sold as a kit (that I didn't buy) and they used 2 1/2" strips instead of 1 1/2" strips but the pattern with the link used the 1 1/2" strips and I thought that would be a better fit for the baby quilt. I laid out all of the colors and started to group them together:

All bagged in their groups of threes:

I looked at the picture above and started sewing the strips into sets of 5 colors

(white at the beginning and end and then the three colors in the middle):

All pressed and ready to be cut:

Cut into triangles 

and hung on the design wall (different stages):

Identical to the original picture but not big enough:

Used all my pins and this is how much I could hang:

I had to start sewing blocks together so I could use more pins to finish up the design:

Design all finished up with some blocks made- 

I had to extend it out and down even more to make it a better crib sized quilt:

Quilt top finished:

Now, she wanted me to keep the quilting very clean lined and modern. 

The backing was requested to be white to keep with the simplicity of it as well.

Here it is all quilted and trimmed:

And then I used white binding to finish it off:

All laid out front and back before the wash:

And here it is all washed and dried and ready for delivery:

Close up:

What a fun quilt to make and I'm glad to send this off to it's rightful owner!

P.S. I did still use a color catcher on this quilt because I did not pre-wash the fabric. It did end up picking up some of the colors that would have bled.

Project: Pink Dress Revisited

So, some of you may remember my post about making this dress for my then 4 yr old. She has since grown like a weed but only in length and is now a lot of leg. We've been having a hard time with skirts and dresses being knee length again so I decided to take matters into my own hands and try to re-work this "old" dress into a skirt. It was REALLY simple.
http://thewrightsideofapenny.blogspot.com/2015/05/project-pink-dress.html

Here's what I started with:

Then, all I had to do was detach the bodice and zipper from the skirt part of the dress:

I then made sure the skirt part of the dress would still slide up and down on her if I just closed up the zipper seam or if I would need to take the box pleats out and just scrunch it with the new waist band. THANKFULLY, closing up the zipper hole didn't change it going up and down so we got to keep the box pleats on this skirt! So, next I measured her waist and cut the elastic. I sewed the two ends together of the elastic by just going around in a square-ish shape (which will also help her remember which side is the back and which is the front). I folded the waistband in half, pinned it, and then did the same so that there were pins quartering up the waistband evenly. Next, I quartered up the skirt so that I could just line up the two sets of pins and then stretch the elastic in between the quarters so that the gathering would be even. I used a zig-zag stitch and had the elastic on top when I sewed the two pieces together. I finished it while she was already in bed for the night. I was SO tempted to wake her to be sure the waistband would fit (there was an earlier attempt but the band was just a hair too big so it would slip down her waist).

And a perfect fit and a happy girl!