I’m 37 weeks pregnant today, and only now am I actually getting around to making this kid any kind of quilt. I have been so insanely indecisive about where to start, like making something handmade for my own child for the first time has just been Too Huge. So I decided to start small, with something that would just force me out of this weird mental block I’ve had for the past 8 months.

I joined Pinterest last week and am already addicted. It was while trolling around there that I found this incredibly cute and straightforward Baby Life Quilt by Vanessa for Moda Bake Shop.

But as I started playing around with fabrics, I realized that this idea would actually make the perfect banner to go above the shelves in the baby’s room. So the first thing I did was change the dimensions. Then I thought it would be really cool to make it using my Orange Room logo font (Pointy) instead of the original font from the pattern. Just to personalize it. Then I decided to make the background fabric brown to punch up the contrast against the white wall where it will hang. And it really started coming together.

Then I just had fun picking out the colors and getting down to business.

Now I’ve gotten all the letters cut out and arranged on the background fabric (I worked on it during my lunch at school this week). They are pinned in place and ready to be ironed on following Vanessa’s tutorial.

Next I’ll iron the letters down, and I think I’m going to do a tight zigzag stitch in contrasting threads around all the letters. The original tuturial didn’t do this, but I think it will help add more punch. Then I’ll play with the size to decide if I want to trim down the brown and add other fabrics around the edges, or just quilt it and bind it off as is. We’ll see.