Bubble Quilt & Nursery

Bubble quilts! They are so much fun! I saw this link on Pinterest from Awaiting Ada and I wanted to see if I could make one. I didn't do a full tutorial because she did such a great job. I will just tell you the few different steps that I took.

I have to tell you that these take a LONG time to make. Don't think that you can take one weekend to make it and have it all finished unless you can literally use every hour from that weekend. Even just the way you have to pin it takes quite a while. But they are so cute that I think they are worth it!

Here is the bubble quilt I made to match our nursery...

The material I used is the Michael Miller and Sarah Jane fabric "Out to Sea". It's my all time favorite material!

This is the first bubble quilt that I made. I had some extra purple material and my friend was pregnant. I was crossing my fingers that she was going to have a girl so that I could give it to her. (Luckily, she did!)

 

For this quilt, I used much bigger squares than Awaiting Ada does. I already had them cut so I thought I would try it out. I think it worked out pretty good! I did use her measurements for the bubble quilt I made for our nursery though, just because I had less fabric. 

If you read her tutorial, you can see that she has a really cute ruffle that goes around the bottom and then has the minky. Honestly, I was running out of time so I skipped the minky. I tried sewing the minky on my machine, but the bubbles were already full and it was just too hard to do. So I had to hand sew the whole bottom portion. (I told you, it took a LONG time!)

This is how I did the sides instead of using the ruffle... I cut the minky so that it was just about an inch and a half longer around each side. Then I folded all the minky up so that it bordered the bubbles and pinned it..

This is how I did the corners... First you pin one whole side.

Then you take the end corner and pull it in so that it looks like a triangle... just like this picture shows. 

Then I pull the non-pinned side up and fold it down into itself, to hide the raw edge. 

Pin it and start hand stitching! Luckily, minky is very forgiving and hides mistakes well. I think it turned out really great!

A few people have asked me to post pictures of my nursery and it's finally all done! So enjoy :)

The theme of my nursery is sailing, based on fabric from Michael Miller and Sarah Jane. Isn't this mobile perfect? I got it from my cousins for one of my showers. 

On the wall behind the crib, I am going to get newborn pictures done and get one of those big canvas pictures to hang. 

This is a shadow box that Steven made for the nursery. He is incredible! 

 We found the wheel at Hobby Lobby. The weekend that we found out it was a boy, Steven and I went shopping to find some cute details for the nursery. This was one of them and we also found the wooden sailboat in the shadow box at Hobby Lobby. I made the poster hanging up in photoshop and had it printed. 

These two blankets are extra special! The one on the bottom is a blanket that my grandma made before she passed away. She had been talking to me about how much she wanted me to have a fall baby at the same time as my aunt. She said that she was making this because she just knew that it would happen. At the time I was thinking, no way! But a few months after she passed away, boom! Surprise! :) Both me and my aunt are having fall babies just like she wanted!

The blanket on top was done by Steven's great grandma Francis when he was a baby. I think that my mother-in-law said that the blanket was made for his baby blessing. So our little guy has a blanket from his great grandma and his great-great grandma! And these cute little shoes are the very first present that Steven and I bought for the baby after we found out that we were pregnant. 

Here is a toy box that Steven made! I told you... He is incredible! I had mentioned to Steven that I wanted a home made toy box and about a week later he totally surprised me with this. It matches the room perfectly! We decided that we are going to do a hand print from the baby on the front of it when we bring him home from the hospital. Then every time we have a baby we will do the same thing. By the time we are grandparents, it will be full of different little handprints!

This is the rocking chair that my mother-in-law recieved from her mother-in-law when she was pregnant with Steven. I just love hand-me-downs! They are so much better than store bought. Steven's aunt helped me re-cover the rocking chair so that it didn't have the awesome 90's fabric on it. :) I tried to do something that would match a boy or a girl so that we can use it for all our babies. 

This teddy bear was made at Build-a-Bear when Steven and I were dating. The weekend we found out we were having a boy, we bought it a little sailor outfit to match the nursery. Every good nursery has a teddy bear in it. :)

As of today... we only have 39 more days until the due date! It's getting really really close! Any good advice for what to do the last few weeks?

One Hour Baby Project... Minky Taggy Blanket

I have seen these taggy blankets before and they look so cute and fun! I had some extra blue minky from another project, so I thought I would try to make one. Seriously it took less than an hour and the only reason that it took that long is because I had to decide between all my different blue ribbon ha ha. 

First things first.. cut the minky. I made mine square, about 24 inches x 24 inches. But you could make it any size that you want. So you should now have two sides of minky that can match up in size. 

The next things I did was pick out all of the different ribbons that I wanted. I know that a lot of times these blankets just have silky ribbon, but I decided to pick out a bunch of different types of ribbon. I placed them around the blanket just to see where I wanted them, but if you have better visualizing than me you can skip this step. 

Once I decided where I wanted all the ribbon, pin them in place. Pin them on the right side of one of the minky squares. Make sure the loop side of the ribbon is facing the inside of the square. Then I sewed each of the ribbons on. 

Next step is to put the two minky sides right sides together and sew along the edges. Leave about a 4 inch opening so that you can turn it right side out. Then sew the opening closed. 

TA-DA! Done. Minky Taggy Blanket in less than an hour. :)

31 Weeks.... Only a little bit to go!

I love July!

Happy Birthday America! Isn't July such a fun month?? Steven and I both just love the 4th of July. We have been out of town and super crazy busy with life, so I need to catch up on my July crafts. 

For the 4th, I made this fun quilt! I have always wanted to make a flag quilt but I have always been to busy. After graduating and now only having one job, I finally had time to do it. Yay!! Honestly the hardest part about this was the math to keep everything proportianate. But I think that it turned out really well! I didn't take a picture of the back, but it is all squares of levi. 

Here are a couple of crafts from my friends that were too awesome not to share....

Amy made this INCREDIBLE wreath. She found everything at the DI or Dollar Store besides the wreath. For the wreath she went to Michaels (with a coupon!) and bought one of the wooden wreaths. She put everything on with a combination of wire and hot glue. Isn't it gorgeous??

Here is one that is from my friend Courtney. Her sister Kelsey made her this hat for her birthday. She had seen a hat like this that was name brand, and she figured that she could make it herself. I love this idea! She got a plain white hat and just colored in sharpie on the hat. This was the perfect 4th of July hat! And it made me excited because I thought of all the other things you could do with that idea. 

Hope you are all having a great summer!

Popcorn Cupcakes

So a few weeks ago was our cousin's birthday. For her party, we were going to see Monsters University (which I highly recommend!).  We decided to make popcorn cupcakes. I searched Pinterest for a tutorial and all I found was pictures. I finally found one but it took forever, so I decided that I would do my own little write up for those of you who also have this issue!

FirstI made the cupcakes, just using the confetti box mix. Once they were cooled and ready to frost, I got out the marshmallows. 

Cut the marshmallows into different shapes. I found that if you cut it in half in different angles, it works perfectly. 

Then just frost the cupcakes using whatever kind of frosting you like best. The frosting doesn't have to be perfect. You just need it to hold the marshmallows in place. It does need to have this shape though, because we want the marshmallows to look like a big bowl of popcorn, higher on top than on the sides. 

Next, you just stick those marshmallows all over the cupcakes. Smoosh lots of them in there so you can't see the frosting and that way it will look full. 

So next you need water and yellow food coloring. I took a water bottle and mixed some water and food coloring. Then lightly spray all of the cupcakes so all the "kernels" have a slightly yellow glow. You don't want them to get mushy, so just a couple of sprays should do it. 

Then I got out my cooking paint brush. I dipped the brush into the yellow water and carefully painted several kernels. That gives it the look of several kernels having more butter on them than others. 

They turned out really cute and they were super easy to make!

Bed Head!

Well this has been long in the making! But finally it's here.. a crafting post! I have been anxiously getting our home all done the way I have envisioned it before I get too big pregnant to move. :) 

Here is one of our bigger projects.. Our bed. It was just a plain black bed from IKEA. It has been great, but I wanted to soften it up a bit and add a fabric head board. As you can see from the picture below, it really was just straight and black. We decided to paint all the furniture gray. So before I started on the headboard, Steven painted all of the bed parts gray that would be showing. 

Here are the supplies that I used to make the head board. The only thing missing in the picture is the staple gun. 

First things first.. I measure where the mattress started. The fabric and foam couldn't come down too far because then the mattress wouldn't fit. I marked the whole thing with painting tape so I knew my boundaries. 

Second, I had to measure how much to cut the foam. Foam is EXPENSIVE. I didn't realize how expensive until I was already into the project. So if you can think of a different material to use, I would highly recommend it. I marked where I need to cut so that I didn't cut too much off.

Once I cut it, I laid it out on the board to double check that it was the right fit. 

Then I did the same thing with the fabric. I didn't want to get started if I wasn't absolutely positive that the fabric was long enough... also I'm a little OCD. :) 

This is the part that some people find a little tricky. You want to put the fabric a little higher than where the bottom of the foam will sit. This is so the fabric will wrap around the foam and you don't see the raw edge of the fabric. 

I put blue tape down where I wanted to lay the fabric against. This gives a straight line so that the fabric doesn't go all wonky. 

This picture shows off the instruction better. You lay the fabric face down on the headboard right up against the tape. This is because you will fold the fabric up and over the foam and the fabric is all in a straight line. 

I put in a staple every couple of inches. Having a small staple gun is great! They are really easy to use and I use it for a lot of different crafts. 

After I did the stapling, I removed the painting tape. 

Next step is gluing down the foam. I just used an all purpose glue. Really it is just to keep it in place while you do the rest of the project. 

After it dried, I had this cute assistant help me lift the headboard so that I could wrap the fabric around the back and staple it in place. I wrapped it just like I would a present, making sure to tuck all of the raw edges in so that they are hidden. Again, I did a staple every couple of inches. 

Next up was the buttons. I know that there is a way to sew them in, but this way seemed better and faster to me... 

First I measure where I wanted the buttons at. 

I had Steven take his dremmel and grind off the back of the buttons so that they were flat.

Then Steven drilled a screw and washer into the spots I had marked for the buttons. 

You need to make sure to use a washer so that it doesn't break the fabric. 

Then I took my hot glue gun and glued the flat button onto the nail and washer. It was way easy!

I think that it turned out really well! It fits our room perfectly and it was a really easy and fun project. Now I just want to get a new cute comforter to match!