I'd been looking on pinterest and Instagram for a while, and finally found this gorgeous "Girlfriend" fabric by Ann Kelle. After looking a quilt ideas for this fabric on pinterest, I was still very uninspired, and had a hard time visualizing how it would look. Lucy did too.
Around that same time I learned about Pattern Jam. It's a website that lets you upload your fabric and design your own quilt....for free! So I decided to try it out. First, I uploaded the Girlfriend fabric I was thinking about buying. Then I started messing around with different blocks and patterns. After each try, I would show it to Lucy, and get her approval. It was so nice to be able to show my 5 year how her quilt could look! She gave me lots of feedback. :)
We finally decide on stars. I tried a bunch of different star layouts, background colors, and border options. Again with Lucy's approval each time.
We finally settled on this design:
When I was designing this quilt, Pattern Jam only allowed you to make quilts with 12 rows and 12 columns (Now Pattern Jam upgraded to allow 16 rows and 16 columns!). Since I wanted mine to be bigger, I made this little "quilt" as an add on to make Lucy's quilt the correct size.
Also, since I wanted the "Girlfriend" squares to be one big 8"x8" square, not four 4" squares, I pasted the images in Microsoft Word and aligned the pieces to make this composite design.
I was finally ready to start shopping and sewing. Yay! I looked at the fabric requirements provided by Pattern Jam to verify how much fabric I needed. Their calculations were a bit more conservative than I wanted to be, so I used the "40 inch strips needed" column and did my own math from there. Note: I had to add these requirements to my smaller tack-on "quilt" for my total fabric requirements. And since I used one big square for the Girlfriend fabric, I disregarded the Pattern Jam calcs for that fabric and did my own math.
Then, Lucy and I went shopping! She helped me choose the fabric (and decided she wanted red, not purple). And after much cutting and sewing... here is the final quilt top!
