Otherwise known as a shameless plea for ideas and advice because I am clueless.
My child is not the only one with Beatles on the brain right now. I have spent every waking minute lately thinking about the Fab Four, because Piper's birthday is in just two weeks, and although I have been musing over a Beatles-themed birthday since, oh, January or so, somehow this just snuck up on me. Like so many things.
I had grand plans to start early, but it is only now that I find myself spending three hours Googling "Yellow Submarine quilt" and "Beatles Fabric." She's still in her "toddler bed" (aka Ikea crib with one side taken off and a rail put on), so whatever I come up with only has to fit a crib mattress, thankfully. I have a couple pieces of the Cranston fabrics that were put out in 2008, but it's not quite enough to do a quilt. At least not a very interesting one. The stuff is still available at some places online, I suppose I could order more. I only have one set of the four panels, a yard (I think) of this print and a yard (I think) of this print. I've looked around at a lot of the quilts made with these fabrics, but none of it is exactly what I'm looking for. She already has a set of pillows made from the pillow fabric, and I feel like doing a whole quilt in the same stuff would be too much. I want something sort of modern-looking, kind of understated, not too cartoony, something that won't look like just a bunch of fat quarters held together by sashing. Then I saw this woman's quilts. You see it there, in the top row? Go ahead, click the picture and take a look. I'll wait.
I know, right? It's FABULOUS.
It's totally Yellow Submarine without being too cartoony, which I think was the trouble with trying to put together a quilt from all those bright print fabrics. I'm not even sure if "not too cartoony" even makes sense since we are talking about a 90-minute cartoon movie here, but I think you get the idea. Anyway, I am so in love with that quilt, and I want to make my own. It's just some strips and some applique, right? Even though I can't hem napkins properly, I could do that, right? And in less than two weeks? Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.
I have also had fantasies of knitting her some Beatles dolls, which, since I am a super-slow knitter, not good at making up my own patterns, and don't know how to do colorwork, are clearly not going to pan out.
Although I am usually opposed to cartoon characters on clothing, I think I could make an exception and churn out a skirt or a dress from Beatles fabric, either what I have or one of the other fabrics in the collection. I'm thinking a skirt or sundress in this rainbow words print might be kind of cool, and this blue or this yellow would also make a nice but not too loud dress. If I want to go all-out, there's this crazy print (they have it in orange, too). I'm running out of time to order anything, but I have no idea what to do here.
What I do have is a plain white hoodie I picked up on clearance for $1.50 several months ago, and I've been trying to figure out how to Yellow-Submarine-ize it. I'm ordering some iron-on patches, but I think I could do something cool with inkjet iron-on transfer paper, too. I was trying to figure out how to stencil a big yellow sub on the back, but it would be a 7-color stencil and I don't think I'm up to that challenge. Which reminds me, have you ever used the inkjet-printable transfer paper? Do you have any recommendations? We've done it twice and both brands we bought sucked. If I can get it to work, it will be a 30-minute project, which is great, because between my quilting delusions and the dress I am knitting for her, I don't have much time.
Don't even get me started on what I want to do for the party. The party that we are not having. Memorial Day is the weekend before her birthday so we can't do it then; my in-laws will be here the weekend after, so that's a no-go (there are many, many reasons why not, starting with "If one Grandma gets to come to her b-day party and the other doesn't, all Hell will break loose"); the weekend after that my family might be coming for a visit (see above), and we don't know that many people here, so if we did it at all, it would be a three-weeks-after-the-day celebration for two other kids and eight other adults. Yet I am scheming about cakes frosted in many shades of yellow, playing pin-the-ring-on-Ringo, and making rainbow beanbags to toss through a Sea of Holes cardboard cutout. Hmm, maybe I could combine them into one game and have a toss-the-rings onto Ringo...
2 comments:
Well, let's see..... I'd just pick one big Beatles project (like an applique crib quilt) for a gift, or a series of smaller, easier gifts (like using Beatles fabric for an outfit). As for the party, I'd work on just one big Beatles centerpiece, like the cake, and let all the other decorations support that in color scheme only.
Additional ideas: I'm thinking of some of the iconic Beatles images, like the 4 head shots in quadrants, and wondering if you could convert that image successfully into black and white, then freezer paper stencil it onto a simple quilted wall hanging. Or just her favorite Beatle freezer paper stencilled on a t-shirt. It would be so cool to sew a Beatles doll, not a lot of detail, but with the shag hair, and then sew a series of clothes and get some miniature accessories so that the doll could be any of the four, depending on how you accessorized it.
I think I'd try to applique a little submarine onto the hoodie. I haven't tried inkjet-transfer paper, but my impression is it works best for projects that won't be subjected to many washings. I like Antoinette's idea of the Beatles doll--you could get something custom-printed from spoonflower maybe, and then just stitch it up.
A big beautiful yellow cake sounds fabulous. Piper is one lucky girl.
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