Frozen Family

Another one of my huge projects of 2014 was making the Frozen Family for Halloween. When Elsie saw the movie for the first time in December of 2013, she assigned everyone characters for Halloween, and I heard about it at least once a week for the next nine months. It was my first time really doing clothing construction, and there was quite the learning curve. I bought and followed a pattern for Elsa and Anna, and just kind of made up Sven, Kristoff, and Olaf as I went. My awesome sister came to town at the beginning of October and did a little photo shoot of us. I used the images for my Christmas cards this year, so I've been holding off on posting them. Now that we are past that, here are some of my favorites.

Elsie's Quilt

I started cutting out the pieces sometime in February after I finished Alice's quilt. I slowly started sewing the blocks together whenever I had a spare minute to work on it. It took me a good while to get them all done.

Then the quilt took a break for a while. It was summer, and somehow it is harder to work on quilts in the warm weather. My twenty finished blocks sat on a shelf taunting me for a long time...

When fall came, it was becoming more urgent that Elsie have a bigger blanket. She still had a little toddler quilt that her grandma had made on her bed, and she was rapidly growing too big for it. I was getting constant reminders from Elsie and Alan that it needed to be finished. Finally, I pulled out the squares, figured out the measurements, picked out more fabric, and got to work finishing up the top.

I knew if I tried to quilt it on my little machine it would take way longer than I wanted to spend on it. I had given myself a deadline of the end of the year, and I really wanted to get it done. I took it to my local quilt shop and rented their long arm to finish it. It took me just over three hours to quilt it, and I don't know if I can ever go back to doing it on my little machine again.

I spent about two days curled up on the couch stitching the binding on it, and then it was finally done!

I did the "Inside Hearts" pattern for the quilting, and I really liked how it turned out. Elsie was thrilled with all of the little hearts all over her quilt.

I finished it with two days to spare before my deadline! I'm just really glad it is finally done and that Elsie can sleep with it.