Retro Kitty and Brit Boy

I mentioned in January that I want to return our home from its current shabby state back to a cosy, hopefully stylish, family home. This means new windows, some plastering, new flooring throughout and lots of decorating. All of which is quite an expense…and therefore is going to take some time! 😉

This is a good thing. It works nicely with my new ethos of slow, but also allows me to really ponder the style choices I’m going to make in each room. Work has already commenced with two ceilings being plastered last week. Some essential bathroom repairs are coming soon, and a new bathroom floor.

So far, so dreary!  Basic stuff…not remotely exciting.

But! Once the bathroom is done, the next room on the list is The Boy’s, and then Button’s.  And whilst we are gathering the resources to buy all the materials and furnishings we need, it seems sensible to make a start on the quilts.

This is much more fun.

First up…The Boy!  He’s Union Flag mad!  Every time we see one in a shop he dashes straight to it!  So, the Union Flag is to be the leitmotif for his new Brit Boy room.  And what better quilt to make for him than Busy Bee Quilt Design’s ‘Victory Garden’.

Obviously the colourway shown on the original isn’t going to work for my little chap,  he’s camp, but not girly.  However, Makower’s ‘London’ is just the ticket.

This is a project that Ma is going to make.  I’m not that fond of machine piecing and quilting, but she loves it.  Who am I to spoil her fun? 😉

For Button, who is a huge Hello Kitty fan (I haven’t met a 5-year-old girl who isn’t), we are taking our inspiration from this spectacular quilt I spied on Pinterest.

Isn’t this just so stunning??????  It’s an original design by Q is for Quilter and I just couldn’t resist it.  Button has to have this quilt.

There is no pattern, so I’m shamelessly plagiarizing reverse engineering and putting my own spin on it.  To start, I’ve sourced a pile of Hello Kitty images from Google and printed them out.  There are tons of them out there…just Google “Hello Kitty Colouring Pages”. I’ve then reduced them by 50% to get them to a good size to make a quilt block.  Each block will be 6″ square when completed.

These are then going to be traced onto fabric and embroidered. The images have been delivered to Ma this morning…she’s been champing at the bit to start the tracing. I’ll be doing the embroidery.  This is going to be a wonderful joint project with Ma, she’ll be doing the pieced squares, which are going to be cream/pink/duck-egg blue…which is pretty much the colour scheme for the room.

These quilts are going to be the centrepieces of some pretty cute new bedrooms for the kids.  When I’ve told them about what we’ve got in store for them, there has been a huge amount of excitement, which makes these projects even more enjoyable for me (if that’s possible!).  And at the end of it, they’ll have rooms that reflect their individual personalities and are a joy for them to spend time in.

Whether they’ll keep them tidy is another matter! 😉