Must Dash For Girls

After watching me work on her brothers Must Dash quilt I watched my little lamb spend the next few days running around holding my mustache template up to her face and talking about mustaches.

It seemed only fair to make her one too.

This pattern is too too much fun!

Must Dash Quilt

Nearing the end of my second trimester and entirely through my third trimester of my pregnancy I became worried and obsessed with finishing my sons nursery before my due date. This was something I didn't manage to accomplish to my satisfaction.

My pal Sweety Darlin remarked at one point that my son would never notice, know, or care that his nursery was finished. Right as she was, I remained a woman possessed. Now that he's here I've calmed way down and very few of the unfinished nursery items bother me.

Two weeks into happily co-sleeping with our newest addition I realized that I actually had months until it mattered how finished it was.

Once his umbilical cord came off I was happy that now tummy time could begin. I'd already seen this quilt on Pinterest but now I had that "my-son-must-have-this" feeling. So I set to work.

I had my husband print out the template from the source post and bring it home.

Began digging through my fabric to see what I thought might best suit this project.

Hit up WalMart and checked their fat quarters, took a picture of the ones I was considering, texting them to a friend and asking her opinion.

Going to JoAnns after I was once again unable to get someone to help me at the WalMart fabric counter. Get more fabric. Take pictures. Load them to instagram.

I had my husband cut fat quarters off of the half-yards I'd bought at JoAnns.

Then I cut the 10" blocks off as instructed.

Create a mustache template using some leftover cardboard. Cut myself with my rotary cutter. Bleed on the paper print out. Post the whole shenanigan to Instagram. Soldier on like a boss.

Cut the mustaches.

Cut out some mustache shaped fusible webbing. This I didn't do as well as I'd hoped so I ended up fusing the webbing to the mustache and then cutting off the excess.

No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the mustaches with the fusible webbing on the backs to fuse to my blocks.

I was able to cut all my template, the mustaches, the webbing, and sew the mustaches onto the blocks all in the same day.

Now to begin laying out blocks and figure out the most appealing configuration for the blocks.

Sew them together.

I chose to get more of this adorable mustache fabric from JoAnns to use on the back of the quilt. I hope to have this finished soon.

Meanwhile I'll still making other quilt tops.

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.