Turning A Fail Into A Win

My friend Trina is one of the ones vaguely mentioned from the Pregnant Lunch post. She too is a crafter, and she made some really amazing wonder bumpers.

With less than 30 days left until my due date I decided to try my hand at another version of them. I thought I could just make a semi-no sew.

I drew out a plan.

Picked out my fabrics.

Cut some strips.

And made two different test bumpers. The first of which failed miserably (and I realized I didn't have enough of my second fabric to make it reversible so I had to buy more) and the second

I was pretty unhappy with.

Which didn't leave me 100% thrilled I now had seven and a half yards on this fabric.

It needed more padding

and I didn't feel confident about all those ties on the back staying put.

Having seen this pin about a jelly roll strip quilt and kind of wanting to make one I decided to turn a lot of these strips into something more useful.

I took some of the smaller pieces and cut them into even smaller strips and began arranging them to see how this might work out.

Once I finally had a test swatch I was happy (well as happy as I was going to be) with I got to work on a larger scale.

I laid down my first set of strips

and then started weaving pieces in and out of them.

This whole situation took tons and tons, and tons of pinning. If you follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or on my Facebook Fan Page - you may remember seeing pictures of me having to repin

. . . and repin.

I tend to pin pretty meticulously so the fact that this needed to be done at least three times was a particular annoyance.

 Eventually I got everything sewn together.

I used a set of decorative stitches for everything I sewed vertically

and another for everything that was horizontal.

Here's what a block generally looks like.

With all the other things I still had to / planned to sew - I asked my husbands grandmother to quilt the rest of it for me once I had the top finished.