I'm back in the game

Hello!

How have you all been this summer?

I know I was gone away for a (really really) long time, but now I'm back and the good news is that I have had time to make a lot of cool things that I'm super excited to share with you guys.

The first is a huge project that I gave myself a stupidly short amount of time to do, but as it was a gift for a (relatively) newborn baby, I had a deadline.

I made a whole baby quilt. In about two weeks.

I didn't think it would be such a huge project (because I'm naive and also because I've never made a quilt before) but boy was I wrong. Wow, this was such a huge thing to get through.

Picking the fabric is obviously the first step and being the unorganized sewer that I am, I only had a vague idea of what I wanted. I knew it was going to be for a girl, so I thought "pink", but then I thought "I don't want to indulge the stereotypes that all presents for girls must be pink, so maybe gray" and then I realized that pink and gray is one of my favorite color combinations and hey, there you go, that's my color scheme. Then my mom and I started looking for fabric, which was a challenge in itself because it's surprisingly difficult to find gray fabric that is cute enough for a baby and pinks that are all in the same tone. Then we found elephants and I was sold, so the official theme for this blanket is pink, gray and elephants.

The actual sewing process was not hard so much as time consuming, it's all straight lines but when you have a quilt that's going to be nine squares by eleven, it takes a while. I'm still amazed I didn't mess up in the pattern. I actually based it off a quilt my mom made me when I was a baby. 

The batting was a battle, which I won, but it was all twisted and pulled and didn't fall into place correctly, but the mistake isn't visible so how much of a mistake is it really?

So it turned out kind of massive, and I can't really say the process went smoothly because I did spend a while pulling out stitches and then sewing things back up, but the result was, if I do say so myself, quite nice. I'm very proud of it, but I'm not sure I'll be making another quilt anytime soon. I'd never made one and I wanted to, now I have and I'm good. 

What really matters is that the gift was well-received (which it was) and that it will be put to good use (as you can see by this little cutie, it already has!). I'd say she's pretty happy with it, wouldn't you?

Hope you all had a fantastic summer and I look forward to sharing more projects with you this year!

- Blue Cat