V’s Quilt, part 1: fabric

See all the posts about V’s quilt HERE.

For a long time, even before we started converting Vivian’s bedroom to her “big girl room,” I was thinking about a new bed cover. She has the bed that I slept in growing up, which is the one that my dad had when he was growing up.  However, the cream+burgundy floral comforter I’d been using would terribly clash with her white and grey walls.  As I considered ideas, I zeroed in on making a quilt for Vivian. There was a quilt I had seen on the Film in the Fridge blog which I had loved instantly and pinned immediately. The more I thought about a quilt for Vivian, the more convinced I was that this would be the perfect design.

I resolved that this would be a gift for her third birthday (spoiler alert: it didn’t get finished in time…). As her birthday got closer. I realized that I really needed to get going and make some final decisions about design and fabric.

I was really spurred into action by an upcoming craft day at church. (They really are seriously good motivators for me…). I knew it would be the perfect venue for getting a good start on cutting my fabric, so I made a last minute decision to drive almost 2 hours to Lancaster, PA to get my hands on some good stuff!  My mom had been to the Old Country Store in Intercourse, PA, and highly recommended it. And bonus! She and my dad met me there so that they could watch my 2 kids and I could choose fabrics without worrying too much about them.

I went into the fabric-buying with the idea that I wanted a color scheme of “all the colors.” And then I got into the store and had about 10 minutes of brain-paralysis as I realized how much fabric there was to consider! After wandering around, completely overwhelmed, and feeling pressure because I had less than two hours until the store closed, I finally pulled myself together and pulled one bolt that had caught my eye. From there, I just collected more until I had a lovely rainbow laid out on the counter.

Along with the colored fabrics, I needed white for the background, of course!  I purchased 7.5 yards of Kona Snow.  It was  HUGE bundle after I pre-washed it!

Before I prewashed the colored fabrics, I took photos, of course.  I am so excited about how all the colors play off of each other.

 

In the end, I have 25 different colored fabrics that I purchased at the Old Country Store.  In addition, I am using some scraps of fabric that I used for Vivian’s nursery so that the new quilt ties in with her old decor.

Next in this series: a post about the quilt design and cutting the fabric.