Gifts of Love for Bella

As most of you know, I have my first Granddaughter on the way.  She's due in about 6 weeks or so.  I'm getting so excited.  And you also know, that I have been very busy getting several things made so I would have them ready for Mandy's Baby Shower last Saturday.  Well, I was so glad to get them finished, that I wrapped and packaged them before I took pictures.  Argh!!  Anyway, I had Mandy send them back down here with Ryan this week, just so I could take pictures.  I really had fun doing all of the different outfits and projects.  I'm sure more are coming.

I'll start with the dresses first.  I got all of these patterns from websites I found via Pinterest.  This first dress called the "itty bitty dress" was really fun to make.  I got the free pattern from the made by RAE blog.  I had a little problem with the piping (first time I've worked with it, and had to make it from scratch on top of that), but it worked out okay.  I thought it needed a bonnet to go with it so back to Pinterest and I found this free pattern.

These next two little dress caught my eye the first time I saw them.  I thought what a great idea.  Very easy to make, plus they are reversible, so 4 for 2.  And the backs are open so you can see ruffles from her diaper covers (oh yeah, I need to get busy on those).  This pattern was $8, but it comes in sizes 0 to 24 months.  So I should well get my moneys worth out of it.  I ordered it from You Can Make This.com

So that's it for the dresses for now, I'm sure more to come.  Next, here is a picture of the quilt I made that Mandy requested.  She wanted it twin size so she could use it as Bella moves into a twin size bed.  I took some pictures, but Mandy took one with it in the nursery and I thought it looked much better than mine.  It also shows the painted walls that Mandy did.  She made the pattern from the backing fabric I used on the quilt.

I was prepared to make some lavis quilting blocks, but she just wanted plain and simple patchwork.  I never knew that laying out 22 different pieces of fabric would be so hard.  Once I had the 5" squares all cut and determined how many I would need horizontal then vertical, I spent I don't know how long moving them around until I figured out the pattern I wanted to go with.  I barely had enough of each pattern to do what I planned.

Also, she wanted me to make a wall hanging that looked something like a quilt she had seen at Pottery Barn kids, but matching the quilt.  So this is what I came up with.  I think it still might need Bella's name on it somewhere, but will leave that up to Mandy since she is much better at embroidery than I am.  This picture makes it look bigger than it was, but I think it was about 18" x 24", or something close to that.

So after doing all of this, I wanted to do something for Luke.  One day I got my daily email from The Missouri Star Quilt Company with the Deal of the Day.  It was perfect for Luke.  It was a layer cake, called "Welcome to Bear Country" for Moda fabrics, featuring the Berenstain 

Bears. Luke loves those books, so you guessed it, I placed an order. I had seen a video tutorial from Jenny Doan called, Double Sliced Layer Cake Quilt.  I had just seen it a couple of weeks back and thought it would be perfect for this quilt and looked like it should go pretty fast.  Well, it did and it was so much fun to make. 

Needless to say, Mandy and Luke were very surprised to see a blue package at the bottom of the gift bag.  Oh yes, one more thing.  The Gift Bag.  I saw this bag somewhere on the internet and thought, well that would make such a good tote bag for Mandy to have to tote all of the baby stuff and Luke's

things when they come to visit.  I found the blog, Gudrun's World G.E. Designs and the book, "Fast & Furious Family".  So I went to Amazon and ordered the book.  It came very fast.  It has several other good projects that I plan on making in it.  The bag was a little tedious, but fun to make.  It came out alot bigger than I expected it would.  Also, this was a first time using laminated fabric.  The only problem with it was I was unable to use my normal sewing foot.  I had to use my walking foot in order for it to go through my sewing machine.  After I figured that out, it was easy peasy.  I used fabric from Riley Blake called Woodland Tails.  It was such a fun fabric and works with both girls and boys. I packed all of these things in the bag and topped it off with lots of various shades of pink tissue paper for the shower.

Okay, that all for Miss Bella and Luke, for now anyway.  Next big project, Jordan's quilt.  I'm excited to get started on it.  I think he is really going to like it.

Happy April Fools Day,

Gaila