I spent a lot of my working at home days during my pregnancy sleeping – that was one thing I hadn’t really anticipated! I’m not going to lie, I lost a bit of enthusiasm for crafting and my blog which was a bit disheartening after all the effort I had been putting in to it. But in the last few weeks I regained my crafting mojo and was able to complete a few projects for Little One. The fabric buying ban was still in place (and still is, actually!) so I raided my stash for all the plain colours I have. So these are a mixture of mainly Kona cottons, Moda solids and a few other random ones I had. There are 21 colours altogether, and I used 3 squares of each – Tom helped me to work out how to lay them out so they were ‘random’, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. It reminds me of Elmer the Patchwork Elephant! The backing fabric (pictured above) is ‘Mother Goose’ by Windham fabrics and it’s just gorgeous – I got it from Fabric Rehab with a birthday voucher (which certainly does not break the fabric buying ban haha!). As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to get it for this quilt.

I ended up with extra backing fabric and my Mum suggested making a cushion for tummy time – I found a tutorial online and it has turned out really well. I made some spare covers for it, which is why you’re probably thinking ‘but the one in the photo has cats on it!’ I’m going to do a separate review post about that pattern, so look out for that at some unspecified point in the future…!

I also managed to make some curtains for the nursery, using fabric from the duvet covers I had when I was younger. I loved them so much that I couldn’t part with them! It’s really nice to have been able to use them to make something for Little One.

Our nursery is quite small, so we kept everything white and decided to add lots of colour. My Dad very kindly came to re-wallpaper the room, and Tom did the painting. I think he’s all DIY-ed out now! Here are a few more pictures:

The piano stool has been useful in the nursery (added storage = bonus!), but I didn’t get the chance to paint it before Little One arrived. Something to add to the list of things I’d like to get around to at some point…

We are big fans of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Dr. Seuss My Mum picked up these cute bookends in the charity shop she works in. They’re fab!

This mini wooden seaside was a gift from Grandma H and Grandad K – we call it Maryport in a tin (that’s what it came in). We spent quite a bit of time there as a family, so it’s lovely to have this in the nursery. Little One likes to look at it now that she can focus in on things a bit more. It’s a good job that crabs and seagulls aren’t this big in real life – not to scale here!

The lovely prints on the wall are from Miri Studio. We wanted to have some pictures in the nursery, and had a couple of these frames from Ikea already. Katy from Miri Studio makes them to fit these frames, so they were perfect! And it’s good to support artists from the UK. I love them all, but the cheeky squirrel is my favourite!

I can’t tell you how long it has taken me to put this post together! A big thank you to Tom for the gift of time to be able to do it I’ll be returning the favour so he can do some composing! He has taken some extended leave thanks to shared parental leave, and it has just been wonderful having him around. Time is going so fast and it’s brilliant that he can be around to be with us. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if he had gone back to work after only two weeks – I have a lot of respect for everyone who does that. We’ve been able to muddle through the fog of the first few weeks together, and it’s so nice to be emerging from it and to be able to do a few more normal things. I’ve been getting back in to Instagram too, as well as posting a few things on my Facebook page, so you can pop over there to see more in between my blog posts if you like. It feels good to be back!

(I love this picture! It took a while to get it, but I got it! )

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I matched the guitar colours with Kona cottons (it’s always good to have a reason to get the colour card out!), and it goes with Kona Jamaica (blue), Persimmon (orange), Lipstick (red), Pear (green) and Corn Yellow. I decided to use a dark blue binding to match (this was pre-made).

To make this quilt, you can follow my instructions from my first quilt (click here). I cut 7″ squares, but only used a 5 x 5 pattern to make a square quilt this time. It made sense to do that really, especially as I jut used solids for the patchwork. At first I modelled the layout on my first quilt, but I thought that the colours wanted to be a bit more random than that (although Tom has since pointed out to me that it can’t be random if I planned it…!). So this is the randomly-planned layout:

I’ll definitely be using this layout again – I’ve got one of each colour in each row, which is quite satisfying! I stitched the squares together, and then layered up the quilt. After my first two attempts at quilting, I used a different wadding this time – I went for two layers of Simply Cotton (pre-washed before quilting). It’s so much easier to quilt with, and I’m much happier with it overall so will definitely be using this and nothing else in future! Here’s the back – I kept the quilting simple by quilting in the ditch, which means that the pattern still shows through nicely:

I really must learn from my issues with binding though – after my first two quilts, I told myself that I must stitch the front on the machine and then hand stitch the back. Did I do this? Nope! So a few bits are a little untidy…let this be my reminder for the next one!

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