Baby Shower Bonanza

As promised, I’m back with some of the creative projects I put together for the baby shower of one of our former students this past weekend, I thought I’d share them with you!

I knew that I wanted to start by making a banner for the little guy.  I often do this for baby showers, and I’ve done it for our kids too.  It is such a sweet way of decorating for the party, but also in making something for that child’s room too.  Wherever they go, he knows what spot is his.  I went to the fabric store and picked out a few fabrics I liked.  One of the gifts she requested for him was books, so when I saw this lighter blue fabric with the words from “Goodnight Moon” on it I knew I had a winner.  

It’s really to make banners.  I just cut out the banner shape, iron on some lighter weight interfacing, hem the edges, and then decorate.  Above you can see I appliquéd on a circle and die cuts of the letters of his name, interfacing those and then zig-zagging them on with my sewing machine.  It’s all sewn onto a long length of wide grosgrain ribbon (probably about 8 feet) then accented with buttons.  

As I was looking at the banner I thought, “hmm, I wonder if I could make a quilt too?”.  I have never made a quilt, but I knew the basic steps, and I’ve sewn a long time and have a mom who’s a professional Seamstress, so I knew I’d have help if I needed it.  So, here’s what I did!

I started with the center panel.  I knew I wanted the design to have a similar feel to the pennants so I appliquéd the pennants onto the panel first.  

I  knew I wanted it to be really simple because it was my first quilt, so I picked a layout I knew I could manage alright.  So, these were my contrasting fabric layers, laid out how I thought I might like them.  

As I looked at that center panel, I realized I needed something in the bottom corner, so to also personalize the quilt like the banners,  I added the appliquéd “m” for his name, and then added rows of the center panel fabric on the outsides of the rows.  I don’t have quilt cutting equipment so I was hand-cutting and measuring and re-cutting and measuring….quilt equipment would have been easier, but that’s not in the budget right now! :)  So this is the front all sewn together before I started the quilting.  

Here it is quilted (just stitching in the ditch style) and the binding pinned on the back before hand-sewing.  I don’t have a walking foot for my machine, so it’s not perfect by ANY stretch of the imagination, but its soft and sweet.  And I was really proud of how it turned out, especially for my first quilt.  

Here’s my tall son holding up the finished quilt for me.  It was a real work of love, not perfection, but I know it will keep him cozy, and it’s made especially for him.   Finished quilt was 36 inches by about 50 inches.  Not perfect baby quilt size in the length but that’s all the fabric I had.  

Here’s a closeup of the quilt.  It was a really hard project (as in time consuming and brain work :) but a fun project too.  I think I might even make another one!  

Here’s a few more pictures from the party.  

Paper banners I made with one of the girls for the decorations, we had several strings throughout the rooms.  

Here was his banner at the party.  

This fun onesie project was thought up by one of my other girls.  She took quilting fabric and scraps from the quilt and used double-sided interfacing on it.  Then she had the Baby Shower Guests create onesies for him.  TOO CUTE!  Check out the little moustache!  Most of them had designs on the front and on the bum :)  

And these are my girls.  Each of them have graduated in our Youth Ministry and I love them.  Two are leaders with us right now, and one is a former leader.  The bottom five are all former students of mine.  We’re all laughing and have funny faces because the photographer didn’t know you also had to look through the view finder on my camera.  The beautiful laughing lady with the baby is the new mama :).  The two dark haired ladies and the lady on the lower right are the ones who did the shower with me.   It’s a beautiful stage of life to still share with them.  I’m so blessed to have known them all these years.  I’ve known each of them since they were 14 or 15 and now they’re seeing new milestones in their life.  So grateful for God’s goodness.  

Thanks for dropping by to share the fun with me!

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Baby Shower Bonanza