For my daughter's nursery, I used the Penelope pattern from Pottery Barn. I fell in love with the adorable little birds on the crib sheets. Eventually these sheets inspired my sweet girl's whole room. What would we do when our baby grew up and needed a big girl bed with big girl sheets and quilt?
Around that time, www.spoonflower.com held a contest to design a "cheater quilt". (A "cheater quilt" is fabric which appears to have been quilted together, but it is actually a patchwork design printed onto a single piece of fabric.) I decided to collage different elements from my little girl's nursery into a patchwork design. The result: 2 yards of quilting weight fabric formed the center panel on a twin size quilt!
I picked up an adorable pink floral fabric to surround my custom-designed fabric on all four sides. The back is a single piece of bright pink fabric. I used 3/4" quilt binding and a zig-zag stitch to bind the edges, and the edges of all center squares are "quilted". In other words, the squares are not pieced together, but I sewed on all of the lines.
My design incorporated sections of the green rug in her room, a collage I had made for her wall with birds made of scrap-booking paper, a polka-dot design from flower pots I painted for her room,...
...photos of an origami mobile my husband and I made for her room, a stylized photo of wavy lines I painted on a dresser drawer pull, and a photo of her minky fabric changing table.
Perfect!!! Now my baby can grow up in style and still enjoy her little birdies!
If you are interested my fabric is available for purchase here.
If you are interested my fabric is available for purchase here.
I am also hoping to use the crib sheets someday to make her twin-bed-sized pillowcases, using a pillowcase tutorial from www.dana-made-it.com, available here.
