Cruiser Blvd: The Beginnings of Two Toddler Quilts

Well, it's almost time.  At some point in the next several months (hopefully not too soon) my boys will be ready to graduate from the crib and move to toddler beds.  This means they will need new quilts for their brand new beds!  Yay! 

 I spent some time during our Christmas break looking for ideas.  I decided it was time to try making something with a Jelly roll so I pinned tons of jelly roll quilts on my Pinterest board.  Then I picked 7 or 8 and mocked up generic versions in Excel and let the Hubby pick two.  Sometimes he complains that I ask for his advice but never actually use it (this doesn't ever happen to you, does it?), so I am sticking to the ones he chose - and I'm super excited about it!  He picked Jungle Path and Broken Herringbone:

THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO.  CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO VISIT MODA BAKE SHOP

THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO.  CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO VISIT MOLLI SPARKLES

And then I got to pick out fabric!  I decided I wanted to make two quilts using different patterns, but the same fabric line.  Matching, but not matching, you know?  That's the way we do it around here with our twins.  :)  Once again, I found 6 or 7 lines that I liked and left it up to Hubby to choose.  He chose Cruiser Blvd by Sheri McCulley for Riley Blake, which is perfect!  The Hubby is a transportation engineer, so he loves all the road signs and stuff.

And the best part is, I found this FULL FQ bundle on clearance at Fabric Fly Shop.  Since I would have needed three jelly rolls to have enough fabric for both quilts, and this bundle cost about the same as one jelly roll (don't hate me...), I jumped on it.  So I'll be making two jelly roll quilts with fat quarters.  It's all good.

I was SO excited to get this package in the mail!  (I have never bought an entire line of fabric before.  Usually I buy only what I need for a specific project.)  When it arrived, I didn't even wait to open it and spread it all out on my kitchen table to admire it.  :)  And then I put it all back together and took some nice pictures of it...

 

I've decided to do one mostly green quilt and one mostly blue quilt.  As of right now, these are my fabric groupings.  The green one will be Broken Herringbone and the blue one will be Jungle Path.  I'm going to use the little hexies and the stripes for binding (the two yellow prints are leftovers). 

What do you think?  I'm still a little unsure.  Is the pop of red in the green stack too much?  Should I switch it for one of the yellows?

On another note, the other day when I was working on bee blocks, one of my boys came in to "play" with me.  We'd been struggling quite a bit with nap time and I kept ending up with two toddlers taking naps at DIFFERENT times (NO FUN).  So one day while Jaxson was napping, I brought Bronx in to sew with me.  I sat him on my lap and chain pieced a bunch of blocks while he watched.  Then while I was ironing them, he went through one of my fabric drawers and brought over a pile of fabric to "sew" (don't worry - I took the needle out as soon as I realized what he was doing and of course the machine was turned off).  At first he put a piece of fabric up on the extension table and waited for something to happen.  It was so cute.  When the fabric refused to move by itself, he reached up and started pushing it through like I did (hence the big pile of fabric on the other side).  He would also wiggle the presser foot with his fingers because he knew it was supposed to go up and down while the fabric moved through.  I think he's a cute kid.  Boots in the house and all.

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