Boy or Girl?

How do I make a quilt when I don't know the gender of the baby? This was my dilemma about 8 weeks ago when thinking about the quilt I wanted to make for my good friend Dana and her new baby. She chose not to find out what the baby was and I really didn't want to make a gender neutral quilt.

One night, while trying to go to sleep I came up with the idea that I would make two quilts, one girl and one boy. This way, I would have a quilt ready to give her when she got home from the hospital. Then, whichever quilt I didn't need, I would sell.

I set about my research for fabrics through my regular channels online. Yes this quilt was for the baby, but it is for Dana too, so I wanted to make sure it suited her tastes as well. I found the boy fabric quickly, an adorable monkey print in greens, brown, orange, blue and white. The monkeys came from the Urban Zoologie line and the coordinating prints came from the Remix line, both from designer Robert Kaufman.

Now I had a little more trouble finding fabric for the girl quilt that was just right. After a few searches, I found a retro looking fabric called Flock by Andover Fabrics. Soft pink, orange, brown, yellow and white, it was calling Dana's name.

Since I was knee deep in production for Fog Fest, I came up with a design that was cute and would showcase the fabrics, but could be constructed quickly. Also the baby's due date was fast approaching! I went with a simple framed four patch with a large border on the outside. The back was pieced together with a row of 4" framed squares pieced to the main panels. Each was quilted with a coordinating thread in a meandering pattern over the whole quilt.

Both quilts turned out completely adorable and I made matching toddler pillows to go with them. I made them slightly larger than a crib size, so they will fit a toddler bed nicely and be cozy to snuggle with as the child gets older.

Well, surprise, it was a baby girl! So Dana and her new daughter have a beautiful new quilt. She absolutely loved it and loved the colors, so my gut feeling was right! The best part was seeing her smile and almost tear up over it.

The adorable monkey quilt will be available for sale at Fog Fest or in my Etsy shop after October 2nd. 

Fog Fest Booth Test Run #2

We had a chance to do another test run of our booth today. After tweaking a few things, now we are super happy with the results!

Michelle and I have two different crafts and it so happens, I have a lot more variety of items than she does. Our original set up had her stuff all on one shelf and the rest of mine everywhere else. It felt too "this is your side and this is mine", which is something we talked about avoiding in our original discussions. So today we did a much better job of co-mingling our items on the shelf and the back display table. We achieved the cohesive look we were going for.

We came up with a Plan B for the bag display just in case we can't zip tie the wire framing to the frame of the tent. Also we set up with the mannequin heads which we added wigs too at the last minute.

We are loving this wig with the beanie on it. The bangs sticking out are so great!

With just a few more items to create for inventory and price tags to be added, I would say we are just about ready for our first craft fair!

Fog Fest Booth Test Run

Michelle came over on Friday and we had a chance to set up a test run of our booth. I must say, we were pretty excited at the results. Michelle did such a great job of designing it and making it all come together.

The cool thing is we have spent very little money making it look nice and professional. We re-purposed the black wire frame from my house, the A-frame shelf came from eBay and I made the T-stands. We marked off a 10 x 10 area on my backyard patio and used the fence to hang the wire frame. The wire frame and quilts will actually be hung from the frame of the tent that is provided.

We stepped back and admired our work. A plan Michelle drew out on paper, now had come to life. We just looked at each other and grinned at how awesome it looked. Now, hopefully there won't be many surprises on our first day of set up!

Wire frame to hang all the bags.

Got my 5 year old to take pics of us holding quilts to see how they would look as the backdrop.

Home made T-stands to showcase the belts and headbands. Vase for cat toys and a container for the marker roll-ups.

Another quilt back drop.

Baskets to hold the remainder of the quilts and the baby blankets.

A-frame shelf to showcase all the beanies. We ended up painting the shelf white.

Two very happy and excited girls!