When it was time to redecorate my son’s room last winter, he had just abandoned his fascination with dinosaurs and was heavy into knights. Since then, we’ve cycled through trains and now we’re on to a consuming passion for Richard Scarry books. So my husband and I knew better than to design his room around his obsession du jour. Instead, we let Parker pick the wall color and added a few small touches that reflected his interests.
I made the Colorwheel Quilt from Joelle Hoverson’s Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts, changing the rainbow color scheme to blues and greens, and told him to think of the circle as King Arthur’s round table. I used the leftover fabric to make a curtain for his closet, dyed the formerly yellow slipcover I had made for his chair a nice apple green and made very simple faux Roman shades for the windows.
To make the shades: I cut rectangles out of the solid blue linen-blend fabric and window shade lining an inch larger than the inside measurement of the window, sewed them together leaving an opening for turning and then turned the panel right side out and sewed the opening by hand. I added grommets along the top edge and the sides, and cup hooks screwed into the window frame to hang the panels.
The knight theme was limited to a few prints purchased from Bealoo Art Designs, and a pillowcase I made for his bed. The pillowcase was so easy, I’ve made several more as gifts for other kids, and wrote an article and tutorial you can find HERE or on my tutorials pages above.
I admit, I wasn’t eager to re-do his room because I still loved his “nursery.” But I preserved a bit of it by including a piece of fabric from his baby quilt in the new quilt. Now if I could just find some Richard Scarry fabric….
Wow, I love the blues and greens, gorgeous! Thank you so much for sharing it with us. Joelle
I really love your quilt with just the blues and greens, and everything you added to his room. I am really scared of that quilt pattern. I have that book too. I lust after it but it looks so hard. I’ve never sewn a real quilt so I will probably not make that one my first. yah.
[…] are a lot of blues in the solid strips and I have a lot of blue prints leftover from my son’s colorwheel quilt, but I already know I’ll have to buy some yellows and purples. But I think it will be pretty […]
I love your version of this quilt! I’ve just finished piecing my quilt top and am a little scared of quilting it up. Do you have any tips for quilting it like you did? Did you learn anything while quilting it? Yours looks so great!
What I found really made it easier was taking a yardstick and a disappearing ink pen and drawing the quilting lines all the way across. In other words, I think the directions tell you to quilt along the seam of each wedge to the center, but I figured it was easier to go all the way across without stopping in the middle. I think I started with one line, then did another that intersected with that one at a right angle (like looking at a clock: the first line went from 12 to 6, the second went from 9 to 3 and so on). This was a tiny bit tricky in that my pieces didn’t line up perfectly all the time, but I found I could just veer off the line a bit if needed. And like all quilts, once you wash it and it wrinkles up, any imperfections are not noticeable at all!