This week was a blur.  Each day was busy and the time flew by.  Big news at our house is that Julia has a driver’s license.  This is always a huge milestone for any child and parent.  The contrasting experience is substantial; the freedom and independence of being able to drive vs the increased worry and anxiousness!  Quite the extremes for both the kid and mom and dad. She is a good driver and a responsible person; it is all the weirdos out there that make me worry. I am sure it will be fine though. She was so excited to pass her driving test. We celebrated with frozen yogurt afterward.☺

I was making really good progress on a quilt that I will share next week when I take part in a blog hop celebrating the release of Modern Plus Sign Quilts, a fabulous new book by Cheryl Brickey and Paige Alexander. I loaded the quilt top on a long arm belonging to a woman in our local quilt guild.  This is a different machine than the one I have rented a few times in the past.  Oh my gosh!  It did not go well, not at all.  I fought my way around for a while, continually thinking, ‘it will get better, this will smooth out.’  But it became clear that I wasn’t going to be successful.  So we took it off of the frame and I have been unpicking the quilting.  Ugh.  Not so fun.  But a learning experience, which is always valuable.  For the hop next week, I will share the quilt top only.  I have an appointment to quilt it at the shop (where I am more familiar with the machines) on Friday next week.

Moving on…  between sessions of unpicking all of the ugly quilting, which is still not finished, I did make a cute little sleeping bag for A Doll Like Me.  Remember I cut up my whole cloth panda quilt and made a smaller doll quilt with it?  There were two rectangles that were too small for a doll quilt. But they worked together for a sleeping bag.  I think it is really cute.

Basically I trimmed the two rectangles such that they were the same width but one was longer than the other by about six inches.  I curved the top two corners (I probably wouldn’t do this again because it was hard to bind along that curve without a bias cut binding.) The top of the shorter rectangle needed binding to finish the edge.  Then I stitched the top to the bottom, wrong sides together. I think I stitched them with about 1/4″ seam allowance.

Once they were stitched together, I bound the edges just like you would a quilt.  As I mentioned, going around the curve was a trick because the binding wasn’t cut on the bias.  So, next time I will leave a regular corner or will cut the binding on the bias so it curves appropriately.

When a doll is tucked into a sleeping bag, she needs a pillow, right?   I took two rectangular scraps and cut them to the same size.  Putting them wrong sides together I stitched around the perimeter, maybe 1.5 inches from the edge (I wanted to make a flange).  For stuffing purposes, I left a two inch opening on one end. After stuffing it with poly-fil, I closed up that opening.  Again, I finished the edge with binding (a single fold, narrow binding this time though.)

Thank you to Elena of That Fabric Feeling for the inspiration for the doll’s sleeping bag.  She made an adorable set for Amy last month and when I saw it, I knew I could use these scraps and make one too!

I love the whole set and hope it will bring a smile to a child someday.  Amy is cataloging quilts and sending them out to her special kiddos.  I think I will hold on to this one for a bit.  I am waiting for a few more doll quilts from members of our local guild.  Once I have enough to fill another box, I will send them on.

See you next week for the blog hop.  I absolutely love this book and I am excited to share it with you. Linking to lots of places today so be sure to take a peek at the top of the page, under Link Ups.