Baby Olivia!

I have been wanting to post about this for-ev-er! But a horrible sequence of events prevented me from doing so.  I don’t think Josh’s sister, Jenny reads my blog, but… I didn’t want to take the chance.  She is due with a baby girl the end of this month.  Her baby shower was several weeks ago, but I woke up sicker than a dog the day of, and didn’t think it would be very responsible to go get a preggo lady sick!! 
So finally, I can reveal what I made.  So much of a cute gift is in the packaging. So I wanted to get a cute basket.  Her baby furniture is white, so it seemed pretty smart to spray paint the basket white.

I had originally wanted to get a small chalkboard plaque to write her name on, but it wasn’t happening.  So I went to Joanns and found this cute little plaque.  Some paint, distressing, and scrapbook paper… and I ended up with this! The letters didn't show up well in any of the pictures. It's light in person too, but not this light!

Now to fill it!  Pattie had just showed me her first rag quilt she finished and I was in love.  I was even more excited when she told me about a baby-blanket sized pattern that was in the book she used.  She gave me the instructions and off to Joanns I went.  It was actually really easy!! 

I started with 9 fabrics: 3 darks, mediums and lights.  Sticking with a baby theme, this proved to be harder than I thought! Jenny also isn’t a foo-foo super princess-y kinda mom so I was trying to stay away from tiaras and fairies for the most part.  Once I was home, I cut all the fabric into strips (there are a million different patterns out there, so I won’t get too into the specifics on measurements.  I can send you them if you are interested!) and then you sew strips of the same fabric together, so its double sided.  Then, cut those into blocks.

Next you sew your blocks into rows, then sew the rows together.

The trick is you leave a 1/2 inch seam on each block.  Then when you are done, you go back and cut about every 1/4 inch on each seam (highly recommend spring loaded scissors!) … and ya, it takes forever!  Put in a movie, stretch your arms and get to work!  Then when you are done, wash, dry, and bam! its all puffy and cute!! 

I was so in love with how this turned out! The best part is, all the ruffles and fluff hide your mistakes.

The one other thing Jenny mentioned that she needed was a new boppy cover.  She had almost all the baby essentials already from when her son was a baby… now she just needed it girly.  Just so happened I had just made a new cover for Jack’s boppy so I had the pattern ready to go.  I fell in l-o-v-e with this fabric:

Isn’t it cute? And not princess-y at all!  This is only the 2nd time I’ve put a zipper on something (first one was Jack’s boppy!).  It’s easier than I had thought, for sure. 

It’s definitely not perfect, but I got the fabric on sale for $2.50 a yard, you can’t beat that!

So that’s what I made for Jenny.  I was so excited to give it to her! Here was the finished product:

Sorry for the lame setting, I took these pictures in the hours before Christmas scramble when I knew I’d be giving her the basket and was running out of opportunities to take pictures!