Butterfly Quilt for Baby Girl

For each of our children, I've made a quilt, and with each child the quilts seem to be getting more complicated. It's kind of fun to look back at my square block designs and then to see how much I've learned through the past 8 years about quilting! I'm still far from perfect, but I've learned a lot from trial and error!

The design I chose for our baby girl was a butterfly design. The pieces of each block are small enough that I was able to use a lot of my cute spring fabric scraps. I had cute scraps left over from the girls' spring dresses and it was fun to put the different colors together to see what I could come up with.

These blocks were a lot more complicated than any I've ever tried. Lots of pieces and lots of angles.

These are a couple of my favorite blocks.

And here is the basic quilt top. I used a lighter shade of lavendar and a light beige calico for the strips and blocks inbetween the pieced blocks. I was trying to pull all of the different colors together and because I bought a backing fabric that was another shade of lavendar...I really tried to pull all the different purple shades together.

I decided to do three outline strips around the outside of the quilt. I started with the beige, then the green, and ended with the purple so that it would coordinate well with the light lavendar flannel backing.

Here is the completed quilt top. It's hard to see the detail in this picture, but I machine-stitched the little antennae on each butterfly block. I used a deep brown thread to match the deep brown strip of the blocks. They turned out really cute.

Now I just need to put it on a quilt stand and do some quilting and tying...and then binding!

Ribbon and Bead Necklace

I made this little necklace for my four year old. Her little fingers have a hard time with any type of clasp, so instead of using chains or clasps, I used ribbon and made it just the right size to slip over her head. I knotted the ribbon inbetween groupings of beads just to add to the design and to set off the center drop bead. She loves it, and there are no clasps or chains to break so I love it too!

Fleece Blanket for Baby Girl

Our baby is coming in just a few more weeks! I can't believe it! And since it is so cold here in the winters, I decided to make her an extra warm and snuggly fleece blanket. It was such a fun project, I can hardly wait to snuggle her up in it!

First, I chose two coordinating pieces of fleece. One yard of each was plenty. I actually have enough fabric left over to make her a cute jacket or something for next spring.

Then I just measured and cut the two pieces to my desired size, plus about 4 inches for fringing the edges.

After pinning the two pieces together with wrong sides together, I machine stitched around the edges, about 4 inches in from the outer edge. I used this cute decorative stitch.

Then I cute about 3/4 inch fringes all around the outside edge. I was going to knot the fringes, but decided that I liked it better without knots...and I also didn't want anything hard or stiff on this blanket for the baby...I wanted everything to be soft.

The last thing I did was to tie in random hearts and flowers with satin ribbonand I also tied each kitty's tail just to be sure that the blanket would wash well and not separate or shift.

And here is the finished product! Like I said, I can hardly wait to snuggle her up in it!