I have been really busy making lots of things for Christmas for my kids, my Etsy shop, and for friends who asked for things. I'll be showing most of those after the new year, but here is a birthday gift I made for my daughter that was hugely time consuming. My parents brought up my old doll cradle and I made a quilt to fit it, using some of the fabric from the kids' baby bedding set. I'm not a quilter and have never quilted with my embroidery machine, but thought this would be a good project to give it a try.
I learned a lot and am sort of happy with it. I wish I had done some things differently, but it is functional, and I think she likes it.
Here is the cradle before. It is pretty obvious that it was purchased around 1977.
Here is a close up of the "fabric" (contact paper) in the bed. It's lovely.
I covered the ugly paper with some of their old baby bedding. I thought about putting some batting over it to add some cushioning, and to keep it from showing through, but I simply ran out of time. It is fine and it doesn't bother her at all.
It looks much better already. I thought about painting the cradle white, but have held off for now. I might not like the white with the ivory fabric, so am waiting a bit to decide. I can always paint it later, but there is no way I will put int he work to strip it if I paint it and don't like it.
Here is the quilt I made to go with it. I used squares of the toile baby bedding and plain ivory muslin that I then embroidered with a sweet floral/teddy bear pattern. It ended up much busier than I had planned and it is visually a bit overwhelming with ivory with red lines over the entire thing. I wish I had used some solid red to break things up. Oh well, live and learn.
Here it is in the cradle. So cute and sweet.
Here is a close up of the quilted embroidery I did. The good news is that once I got it hooped, the stitching went really well. I have some ideas for some other projects I can do with these techniques.
I'm glad I tried this and hope to make some more very soon.
