Ada's Baby Doll Quilt

For Ada's second birthday I decided to make a quilt for her Stella doll. Every night before Ada goes to bed she puts her baby to bed downstairs in its crib and tells it night night. She was using one of her old blankets to tuck the baby in, but I thought that Ada, and her baby, would appreciate a custom made-to-fit quilt for the space. Ada is not like my children....they would look at this quilt I made and toss it to the ground as soon as the present was opened...not Ada! She knew right away it was for her baby and carried that little quilt around with her for the entirety of the party! She loved it, and I loved that she loved it...makes all the crafting worth it!

 Back to the project....It is a really tiny crib; only like 10 inches wide by 18 inches long so the old blanket looked a bit bulky. At the time, I was cutting a quilt for Nora's new bed (for the carriage house) out of all my scrap material (and Dana's). Anything that was at least an inch and a half wide and 12 inches long I kept to the side to make Ada's baby doll quilt. It was nice having this little deadline (Ada's B-day) to motivate me to finish cutting out the quilt for Nora. Everyone knows that cutting over 200 4 x4 squares is the funnest part of any quilting project! I knew that fabric would be tight for the queen size quilt I was making so I really only wanted to use scraps for Ada's to make sure that I had enough material for my larger project. All that to say...I was motivated!

What I had left over!

I laid out all of the strips that I had saved and started matching them up according to width. They didn't have to be perfect , just close in size. I then cut all of the strips to 11 inches in length and began to work out a pattern.

I decided to alternate between two strips sewn together, not perfectly in the middle but varying in lengths, and a solid strip. I also tried to make sure that I was alternating between a wide strip and a narrow one. I was going for a more abstract/whimsicle pattern.

Almost finished!

As I was sewing I would just take my little project back to the ironing board and line up the next strip/strips. It was really easy and not too precise, I was just choosing what I thought would look the best. I added to the top and the bottom depending on where I wanted the next strip to go.

About to Iron down my Seams

When I was all finished, I ironed down all the seams. I used a larger piece of fabric I had left over to make the backer and I pieced together 2 scraps of batting to use as a filler. I had all of these things left over from making Ada's bedding for her nursery.

It's going to be cute!

I used some leftover strips of fushia fabric to make the binding. I always sew one side of it on then iron the rest in place. I think it looks better to hand sew the other edge of the binding on, but in this case I just used the machine to make it permanent...it is just a baby doll!

Does this come in a king size?

The back

I was real happy with how the project turned out! Ada seemed really happy too...I just love making gifts for my Niece and Nephew...it makes me feel like they have a part of me with them even when I am not there. I think this took me a total of 3 hours to make (I made it in one evening) and cost me zero dollars....all stuff I had laying around the house!

What about you?? Made any presents for someone special lately? Share some of them here!