A New Doll Bed and Quilt

My Grandpa Park is amazing.

Grandpa with Hailey (6 months) at my cousin Aubrey’s wedding.

He has a woodshop in his garage and loves working in it. As a wedding gift when all of the grandchildren get married he makes them a wooden bench, which he designed himself. It is a very anticipated and cherished gift.

Grandpa recently designed and has started making doll beds for his great-granddaughters. I got a call from my aunt Leslie one day who said she wanted to stop by our house with Grandpa to deliver a doll bed for Hailey. I didn’t even know he was making one for her. What a great surprise!

Isn’t it great? The wood is unfinished, so we have full reign over what we’d like to do with it. I think we’ll probably just put a urethane coat over it and keep the wood light.

Hailey loves her doll bed. She has been so motherly recently, so the timing has been great. Hailey loves to wrap her baby up, rock her and then put her to bed when she is sleeping. She will close her playroom door because baby is sleeping and we need to be quiet.

I told Hailey to kneel down by her bed so I could take a picture of her. Next thing I knew she started praying. She asked that baby would “grow big and be healthy”. I thought that was funny.

And then she decided to read baby a “special bedtime story”.

Since baby now had a bed, she needed a mattress, blanket and pillow to sleep with. I made the mattress using this tutorial from Ana White. It was easy peasy and quick to put together. I made a quick pillow case and used an existing doll pillow we already had (that used to be mine).

For the quilt I decided I wanted to try out making a small herringbone quilt. I think they are fun. I used this tutorial from Bijou Lovely. And I butchered it. Ok… I didn’t really butcher it, but I didn’t put enough thought into what I was doing. The quilt blocks on the tutorial are 12.5 x 12.5, which is great if you’re making a full sized quilt. The doll quilt is small and I didn’t want it to be made up of just a couple of blocks, I didn’t think it would show off the design enough. So, I wanted to do a small scale herringbone quilt. But, I also just wanted to do it quickly and be done with it. So I made the first half of the quilt block and cut that in half. And then I made the second half and cut that in half. When I put it all together it didn’t line up right and it really bothered me. But, I had already cut out my fabric, so I reminded myself that Hailey won’t care and continued on to finish the quilt. When I had all of my mini blocks cut out, I laid them out and really didn’t like the look of it. So, I rearranged them and added white borders to the blocks to space them out enough that the seams didn’t clash. And here is the result:

Despite turning out totally different than I had planned on, I really do like the quilt. I plan to try again, but this time I’ll think through my strategy better so it actually is a herringbone pattern.

But who cares what I think- Hailey loves it, and that’s all that matters.

Thank you Grandpa Park for all of your hard work! We love you!