Liam’s Camping Quilt

I absolutely amaze myself sometimes.  Not because of how wonderful of a job I do, but because of all the new and creative ways I royally mess up.  I am getting to the point where when I start a project I wonder in what way I’m going to fail next.  For all the years I have been sewing, baking and crafting I should be able to just do things the right way.  Please don’t feel bad for me. I say this with full humor, but it is true.  I can’t think of a single time everything went according to plan.  Even when I think it’s going well I find out soon enough that my confidence was misplaced.  This little quilt testifies to that fact.  I will admit that while in the moment I do not find humor in the situation (I went to bed crying with this one) I try to see it at the end.

On with the show!

There are two babies soon to be born into the JAG family here on Camp Humphreys.  I made baby blankets for both of them.  I’ll show you the girl’s one later.  I made this one first, so it gets to go first.  This is how Liam’s quilt was made.

I started off at the overwhelming warehouse known as Happy Quilt.  They have really fun name brand fabrics like Riley Blake for about $4 per yard.  I’m definitely stocking up on fabrics before we move.  Anyways, I found this Boy Scout print.

 

What baby blanket is compete without hatchets, arrows and fire?  Perfect!

I bought a blue foot-print fabric and a green with similar colors to go with it.  After adding in a couple reds, yellows and another green from my fabrics at home, the round up was complete.

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I had seen a blanket on Pinterest that used triangles to make a simple sailboat shape and thought it could be very easily interpreted as tents. I didn’t want to buy the pattern so I just had to figure it out.  It looked simple enough.  And while it was simple enough I still managed to get it so wrong.

I started off in the right direction with 5″ x 7″ blocks of both color pieces and white. I needed 80 units total and each 5″ x 7″ combo of color and white sewn together would make two units.  Since I had eight colors I cut out 5 of each color and 40 white to sew together.

I marked each white with a diagonal reference line.  I’ve done this plenty of times with squares.  Mark the diagonal and sew on either side cut the line, press open and viola! you have two squares.  I knew to mark the rectangle in two directions because the colored triangles I needed after it was sewn would have to face opposite directions.

This works if you are starting with a square and making squares.  IT DOES NOT WORK WITH RECTANGLES!  After sewing all 40 sets with two seams and cutting them apart making 80 units, I headed to the ironing board to press them open.

 

Look at me taking pictures like I know what I’m doing.  Ha! 

Much to my dismay I did not have rectangles, but kites.  I don’t have a picture to show one open because I had just given Little Bit permission to play on my phone and didn’t want to interrupt her hundredth time of watching “Baby Shark” just to take a picture of my mistake.

After ripping out 80 seams, while being careful not to stretch the fabric, I had to re-set all pairs and start again. I realized that the two fabrics are to be offset with the right corner of the color fabric meeting with the left corner of the white.

I know this doesn’t explain it very well, but just try to picture the one on the right with full rectangles.  In order to make the unit on the left they have to be twisted.

Okay, I’ve got that fixed. Whew!

Now I had 80 units.  40 for one side of the tent and 40 for the other side.  I laid them out and moved them around until I liked how they looked and sewed the units together into the tent blocks.

This picture is really not much.  I just like the smiley face clips I used to keep the rows in order.

So, the blocks became rows and the rows became a top.

I couldn’t find a piece of fabric for the back that matched.  The camping fabric was too narrow so I sewed in a strip of the foot prints to make it wide enough.  It worked.

After I had it all quilted together I threw it in the wash to get it nice and fresh.  Enter catastrophe.  I pre-wash all my fabrics.  Turns out that the red fabric needed another go around before being used.  As I pulled the quilt out of the machine I saw that the red had bled into the white parts making them blotchy pink.  The cries of, “No! No! No!” flooded out of the laundry room.  My girls came running in and hugged my arms.  I really wanted to kick the machine over and over and pound on it in my frustration, (because as we all know it was the machine’s fault) but with an audience I knew it was better that I didn’t.

That was problem two.  Onto number three!

My husband suggested I use a cotton ball and bleach to dab the pink out of the white.  So I diluted a little bleach with water and gave it a try.  It worked beautifully.  Ahh, there was peace in the kingdom.

As I went along he warned me to not get it too soaked because it would damage the back.

Too late.

I had already done it. It soaked into the seam and went to the back.  There was no fixing this one.

 

My family did their best to comfort me in saying that it wasn’t all that noticeable and it was better than having pink on the front.  I believed them, but still went to bed and cried.  I didn’t want to give the momma-to-be a messed up gift.  I wanted her to have something beautiful and flawless for baby Liam to someday vomit and shoot out his diaper on.

Remember at the beginning when I said I try to see the humor at the end.  Well, that was it.  If this blanket is used it is going to be pooped on.  Anyone that has taken care of a baby knows that.

So, here it is, flaws and all, baby Liam’s camping quilt.

 

Isn’t it good to know that there is a God who accepts us flaws and all?  He knows the damage that’s been done to us and all that we have willingly done on our own and yet He loves us more than we can even imagine.  He longs to take out the misset seams and sew you back up in the proper order.

Have a wonderful day.  I’ll be here getting the smoke smell out of my house from my latest baking disaster.  Seriously, cartoon type smoke from the oven, gray haze, smoke alarms…  Who eats scones anyways?