For Eloise, The Warrior

I'm putting a very special package in the mail today... 2013-08-18_0001

Yes, that's right... sometimes I still sew. I'm actually doing a lot of sewing lately, but this particular project was at the top of my priority list. One of my best friends, Heather, recently had her first baby. It was a difficult pregnancy and while it was expected that she would go into early labor, going into labor at 26 weeks wasn't exactly something you can prepare for. Her baby girl stayed put for a couple more weeks, but decided she couldn't wait any longer to meet her awesome parents and made her grand entrance at 28 weeks.

Early.

Scary early.

She was so tiny, but man was she a fighter. From day one, that much was clear. And that's why her parents named her Eloise - which means "warrior." I've honestly never heard of a more amazing premie... aside from being small and needing to develop a bit longer, she had zero serious complications and has been home for a few weeks now.

I was actually hoping to have this done by the time she got home, but let's be honest, I'm rarely ever that on top of things. Anyway, here it is... a special quilt for a very special baby girl. I hope it brings her comfort in those rare moments when she's not feeling so strong.

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(For those that are curious, I used this tutorial as my starting point, and the fabric is Lotta Jansdotter's Glimma collection. The font is Janda Elegant Handwriting, and I used a narrow zig-zag stitch to applique it to the quilt. I also used a machine binding technique for the first time, thanks to this tutorial. I think I prefer finishing the binding by hand, but machine binding is definitely a huge timesaver.)

{nursery progress} the big reveal!

Now that Emma is finally here, I can show you her finished nursery! The expression "labor of love" has a whole new meaning for me now, but we did put a lot of hard work and care into getting her nursery just right. If you remember back to my initial post about the nursery, this is the design plan I started with:

And here's what the room looked like before:

Starting with a firm budget of $1500, we set out to try to create a sweet, DIY inspired, eco-friendly nursery...

Here's the breakdown of what we DIY'd:

DIY'd:

As I mentioned before, we set a firm $1500 budget for the nursery - and while my husband had serious doubts about my ability to stick to that budget - I'm very proud to report that I came in UNDER BUDGET at $1302.24. The biggest expenses in the room were the Naturepedic organic crib mattress ($259), the Ikea Hemnes dresser ($199), the DaVinci Rivington crib (on sale for $191.99), the Elfa stacking drawers for the closet ($99), and the Naturepedic organic changing pad ($89.10). Together, those purchases made up almost 2/3 of our whole budget. We could have cut corners a bit by not going organic for the mattress and changing pad, but raising Emma in an eco-conscious way is very important to us, so we were willing to invest a little more for those things.

Here are close-ups of most of the things I DIY'd:

Bird mobile

Paper circle mobile

Golden Slumbers print

Murder in the City print

Monogrammed throw pillow

Personalized baby quilt

Bunting

Gum Drop ottoman

I hope you like it!  Well, really I just hope Emma likes it. :-) It was a lot of hard work, but we couldn't be happier with the final result. Leave me a comment if you have any questions about resources or any of the DIY projects!