Doll quilts

My girls received doll beds for Christmas and they came with boring light blue bedding. I offered to make doll sized quilts for the new beds. 

My younger daughter chose pink and purple and blue, but not green. She didn't have any other ideas, so I just tried things out. I started with a pink wonky star with 4" squares. Then I made a purple one. The two stars seemed to be enough.  I decided to add stripes in between and also on the sides. For the in between stripes, I sliced them into two pieces and inserted a white strip for something different. I like the pretty colors and the bright white. 

She also chose ladybug fabrics. I have two ladybug prints.  I suggested these would work well for the second bed in her bunk bed. We added red hearts and white. I snuck in a little blue and black also. I wanted to try wonky "flying geese."  I just started with a color and added a white strip on side and then another to form a triangle. I also made wonky log cabins (beginning with a 3" square) on the other side finishing with a strip of white. 

For my older daughter, I thought we might use leftover fabrics from her house quilt. But she requested that I match her bed quilt. Fortunately I was able to find all the fabric scraps and figured out the pattern again. I used a 4" square and 1.5" strips and a 1.5" mini square. I started with six blocks, then added another set, then added some more until I was up to twelve blocks. 

These small quilts were possibly even more fun to make than mug rugs. I also enjoyed planning out the quilting.  Beginning with the ladybug quilt, I tried triangles and lines around the flying geese. For the blocks, I did different things like zig zags, wavy lines, hearts, pebbles, and even drew a ladybug on the black.

The pink and purple star quilt was next. Starting in the center white strip, I made swirls and a few pebbles. Looking at each section and trying different patterns was neat. Knowing whatever I chose I wouldn't have to duplicate on a big quilt was liberating and allowed me to do more dense quilting. 

After getting my older daughter's input for her doll's quilt, I incorporated swirls, zig zags, and wavy lines as well as some details for the mini squares. It was really cool working on this mini quilt replicating her bed quilt as hers was really my first real quilt. It was so easy putting this one together and knowing the many steps instead of figuring it out as I went.  I had also just learned free motion quilting and only quilted some of the parts of her quilt with squiggles and butterfly outlines while others I just outlined the rectangles.