Carly's First Quilt!

In our church, we have a program for our young women, ages 12-18, called "Personal Progress."  If you aren't familiar, here is a link to view:  https://www.lds.org/youth/article/introduction-personal-progress?lang=eng.  It's a great thing to get young girls involved in.  Carly's first value completed was knowledge.  So she could move on to her very first 10 hour project!  She decided she wanted to do a baby quilt.

I already had some fabrics on hand...cause you know, I am rich and collect stuff I don't need.  Right?!  Not!  I just have a hard time passing up adorable fabric when I'm buying yarn or scrapbook paper.  I'm an intermediate seamstress myself...all self-taught.  So I do browse the fabrics at the craft store when I go.  Anyway, I had purchased in the past some Berenstain Bears patterns because my children adore those books.  Well, that is exactly what pattern that Carly was drawn to in my stash.  So we next decided on a pattern.

We decided to go with a tutorial I had pinned on Pinterest.  You can view that awesome step-by-step tutorial here:  http://christaquilts.com/2012/07/19/diy-quilts-1-the-jolly-jellyroll-quilt-supply-list/.  It's a great for those who need some guidance, like myself!  :)  We just altered it a touch to our skill set and tool set...and voila!  Carly has a brand new baby quilt. 

Carly spent hours (13, to be exact!) cutting, machine sewing blocks, and then strips together; ironing; pinning; more sewing; and then learning a blind stitch by hand to do the binding around the edges.  She really was a fast learner, and at the beginning of each step, I showed her what to do, and let her go from there.  She did amazing on it!

She plans to keep this quilt as a keepsake for her very first baby.  Since it's primary colors and Berenstain Bears, it can be for a baby boy or girl.  And it also has a school theme to it.  She said she would like to keep all of the Berenstain Bears books we have as she gets older and moves into having her own family, to go along with her new quilt.  I told her to go for it!  I'm happy that she's interested.  So stay tuned for future sewing by Carly.