Mini album, curtains, and quilt, oh my!

I don't know why I feel the need to put pictures of my projects on my blog, but these crafty projects are becoming a hobby and I just like sharing them with someone, even if it's just the blogging universe. So, here we go again!

For my dad's birthday, I made a mini album of our yearly trips to Snowbird for the Survivors at the Summit hike. I cut up my yellow volunteer shirt from last August's event to make little mini flags for the inside pages and I kinda love how they turned out. Next step, making one for myself!

Then I decided to make curtains for our bedroom, not because we didn't already have some, but because they were the same color as the walls and they didn't do a very good job of blocking out the sunlight in the mornings. We had/have a ton of leftover green material from the back of our ginormous quilt (pictures below) so I just trimmed, hemmed, made loops for the tops, and hung them up. I'm so proud that they turned out to be the right size! (And no, they don't match our current bedspread at all, but they'll match our winter quilt just fine.)




And now, introducing the biggest quilt anyone should ever attempt to make...


Ta-da! All the squares come from old shirts, shorts, pajamas, and pants. Tim and I started cutting the squares for this quilt not too long after we got married, I'm pretty sure, and we had so many that Tim suggested we make a huge picnic quilt. Thus began the loooong adventure! It took both of us plus three friends two days to tie the whole thing and it took me about four hours to bind it (between pinning some of the fabric, rolling it up, pinning the rest, and sewing). When we first laid out the squares, we had to remove all the furniture from our living room - it literally took up the entire room!


To give you a sense of its size, there are over 800 six inch squares and it is roughly the same square footage as five twin size quilts. It's approximately 12 feet wide and 16 feet long, and we had to purchase 11 yards of batting and 17 yards of material for the back. I think we decided it's about 30 or 40 pounds when it's all rolled up. I have no idea how many collective hours it took - a lot!


Everyone keeps asking what we're going to do with it (and how we're going to wash it) and the simple answer is, we just thought it would be cool to have a quilt that big, especially one we made. Next time we have a picnic, we can fit everyone on just one blanket. If we fold it up, it makes an excellent sleeping pad. It'll just be our family's special occasion quilt. (And we'll wash it in a kiddie pool in the backyard. Don't worry, we've thought this through.)