Winnie The Pooh, And Elizabeth Too!

“Keep looking up…..that’s the secret of life.”~Winnie The Pooh

As my faithful readers know, a sewing blog is lots of work! This year I’ve decided that if I have a project completed, I’ll post about it. If I don’t and things are still a work in progress, then I’ll skip a week. This week, for me, I have a work in progress. However, Elizabeth documented a sewing project she did, and guest wrote this week’s blog post!

I taught Elizabeth how to sew, and she does it almost as much as I do! She always has a project going. In our family I am the one who is known as the person who sews. I don’t think everyone else realizes how much Elizabeth does it, or her passion for sewing too!

For fun, this was me, teaching Elizabeth how to sew! HA!

She’s got it figured out now, so enjoy this post of Elizabeth’s sew!

My friends Larry and Paul announced they were expecting a baby. I was so excited for them and since I had just finished up a very elaborate quilt for my niece (future post on that coming in October/November), I decided to make a quilt for the new baby. I asked what the nursery theme would be and was told they were doing classic Winnie the Pooh. Time to fabric shop!

I went shopping with an idea of what kind of quilt I was going to make, but after I only found a small amount of classic Winnie the Pooh fabric, Nicole had suggested the idea of fussy cutting the character fabric and making a quilt using the classic Ohio Star block pattern. Luckily, I found some solid colors that matched the characters.

I started getting everything cut out and hanging on my drying rack. It’s just easier for me to lay it out like this since I’m in a small apartment with limited space. 

Fussy cutting my characters out. 

Once I got a decent amount of fabric cut down, I started laying out what the blocks would look like. 

Sewing the triangles together to make a square.

One block down! Once I started making blocks, I decided I was going to make five rows of four blocks for the quilt. So, I still had 19 more to make. 

Before I knew it, the rows were coming together nicely. 

Once all of the rows were together, I decided to piece together some left over fabric to make a border. Sometimes when you’re sewing and maybe in a time crunch (everything was working against me with this quilt. Time, an injured tendon… time again) mistakes can be made. Here I accidentally sewed the backside of the border to the front of the quilt… Which meant time to take a break and come back to it later with a seam ripper. 

Finally, the front of the quilt was finished correctly. 

For the backing, I decided I was going to piece together all of the left-over fabric. It’s my new favorite thing to do for backing a quilt. It uses up whatever fabric you have leftover, you know the colors are going to match, and also, it’s just the back so it feels like anything goes. 

Now I just had to pin it together and quilt it. I knew I wouldn’t have time to quilt around every star, so I decided to only quilt around the ones with Pooh Bear and Piglet. 

I sewed up the sides and it was all finished and ready to go to the baby shower! Remember the time crunch? Well, I finished this the night before the baby shower. 

Just in time to stick it in a gift bag and be on my way to the baby shower. 

Nicole had a good idea for the layout, and I thought it turned out super cute. I did notice Larry and Paul had several classic Winnie the Pooh blankets and quilts on their baby registry, but why buy one when I could make something unique and personal for little baby Ethan! Hopefully when he arrives, he will enjoy many naps snuggled up in his baby quilt. 

I love Elizabeth’s color choices on this one! I also thought that the “Ohio Star” pattern is such a classic that it would be perfect for a “Classic Pooh” theme! Homemade gifts are the best things to give!

Well, I have a project to work on, so….

As for me, onto the next!