Bella is often the last person to benefit from my work (apart from the presents my earnings buy her!). Actually that's not true. Thinking about it, Jim is the absolute last person to benefit from my work, followed swiftly by my mother and then Bella. Which I guess means that it just doesn't pay off to be related to me!
However, some kind of early nesting urge has taken over, and I'm determined at the moment that my family and house should benefit from knowing me. Which is why I decided last week, amidst everything else that needs to be done, to make Bella her new quilt.
It's the first quilt that I've made for her since this one, and I have to say that it's been a big success so far.
I don't know if it's the fact that it's pink (duh) or the fact that I made it just for her, but she's refusing to sleep under anything else and it's one of the very few handmade things that she's consented to be photographed with.
I've been choosing fabric for this quilt since my trip to New York back in the Spring, when I fell in love with the deep pink of Amy Butler's Coriander print and the pinky/orange of Anna Griffin's Evelyn print.
The fact that Bella is so deeply fond of pink is not something that has sat easily with me in the past. The closest that I got to girly pink when she was a baby, was dressing her in red. But as she's grown it has become more and more apparent that my little girl not only has a mind of her own, but she has one that's coloured pink.
Also, although I work with pink a lot, it is not a colour that I dress myself or my home in. So when I had to face the obvious fact that a quilt in anything other than pink would not be appreciated (her first quilt in red and white actually sits in the front room rather than Bella's bedroom), I struggled with coming up with a colour combination that would appease both of us (I spend a lot of my waking hours coming up with ways to satisfy both of our determined senses of style!).
I knew that Barbie pink was out and that I didn't want anything with an overtly girly print such as ballerina's. And of course nothing commercial because although a quilt made purely from Cinderella fabric really would have made her happier than anything else in the world, we all have a line that we just can't cross, not even for our children (at least until their screams are louder than mine!). But other than that, I was kind of lost with where to start.
And yet slowly I realised that my stash was getting pinkier and pinkier and that it wasn't just out of love for my daughter, but that I was in fact starting to really like the colour myself. And so when it came to starting the quilt last week, instead of feeling a small sense of dread at making something pink that would have to live and be used in my home, I actually enjoyed sorting through the different shades and prints of pink fabrics that I've amassed over the last 6 months.
Because I wanted to use two particular prints that work best on a larger scale (the gorgeous Starburst print and a Liberty print that you can just see in the picture above on the right) I decided to create a pattern that combined both 6" squares and 11.5" squares. This kept it nice and simple and meant that I wasn't using up too much of some of the prints that I don't have a lot of (mainly the pink Kincaid print by Liberty).
I chose the backing for a couple of reasons. I really would have liked to back it with more of the Coriander print but that would have meant waiting another couple of weeks before finishing it and these days I have to strike while the iron's hot or it never gets finished. So I chose an orange print that picks out the orange highlights in the Starburst print, the Anna Griffin print and the two floral Liberty prints. And in all honesty I had a couple of yards of it and it was big enough to cover the back of the quilt!
I kept the quilting really simple so that I could finish it in one sitting and used a favourite red and white spot for the binding.
The whole thing took me a couple of days and I really am pleased with it. And really pleased that Bella likes it so much.
It's spurred me on to not only finally finish Bella's room - I had a huge clear out, rearrange and tidy up of her room last weekend - but also to make another quilt for our front room. I really want to be able to snuggle under a quilt over Christmas (I'm always cold when I'm pregnant).
When Bella saw me photographing the quilt this morning she insisted on sitting with it - however, she's unfortunately going through the stage of posing for pictures, so I ended up with a ton of pictures that look absolutely nothing like Bella!
And we both agreed that her beloved Pumpkin should get in on the act as well.
And finally, Bella had to take some photo's of me and the quilt..
(I don't care that it's blurred, I just love the fact that she's kind of made me look thin!).
