Baby Boy Blanket

Riley Blake Designs has this super cute baby boy owl fabric! When my sister in law and I first saw it, we fell in love with it! Lucky for her, she was pregnant with a baby boy at the time. So, she bought some fabric to make a cute car seat cover.

There is a cute little fabric store that I drive by every day on my way to and from work. I have purposely avoided it because... well, I knew I would spend money there. So, the other day I needed some ric rac for a project (that I need to post about) and I saw that they had the cute owl fabric! My sister in law had mentioned that she wanted a light weight blanket to match her car seat cover. Something she could lay the baby on. So, I got to work! And I discovered that the fabric comes in flannel too! I wanted to use minky because it's really soft... and I had a bit of the lighter brown color left over from a project. Just be careful with minky because it's very stretchy... it caused some problems for me and a little unpicking... and the blanket still doesn't lay as flat as I would like it to, but I still think it turned out cute... and it's super soft! I wanted to give it a little character so I used bright red thread and did some zig zag stitching along the seams. It was super fun to make and I hope baby West loves it!

-Anisa

Here's what I'm up to today...

I love quilting or rather the idea of quilting, the look of quilting, but facing facts, I am the last person that needs to rack up another hobby.

As an homage to quilting, however, I decided to make a paper quilt to hang on the wall.

I'm working on it today.

I purchased a few sheets of coordinating patterned paper from the scrapbook section of Roberts Craft and I've been creating squares using a Marvy Uchida paper punch (it's about 1"x1") I'm using a variety of paper brands including: Rusty Pickle, Chatterbox, Crate Paper, DCWV and My Mind's Eye. I'm using a large stretched canvas that I picked up at Tuesday Morning over a year ago. For my adhesive I'm using good old Elmer's Glue.

I'm really excited to see how it all turns out. I'm going to be using strips of paper to 'bind' it around the edges.

I'll post the finished work in the next day or two along with one of my other posts.

--C

Waterproof a Blanket

So, here's a funny story for you. We went camping over Memorial Weekend.  On the drive there, it started to rain on us.  When we got there to set up camp, it stopped raining, but the ground was wet.  So I pulled out my waterproof blanket to set the little ones on.  As I was cleaning up camp to go to bed, I thought I'd pick up the blanket and turn it upside down over the tailgate of the truck so that the back side (the waterproof side) could dry.  Well, that night it rained and poured.  The next morning all of our camp chairs that we had left out and everything else we owned was WET.  But not my waterproof blanket.  I turned it back over and had a dry place for the

 little ones to sit!

So, here's how I made it.... I got the idea from Little Birdie Secrets here, but I made my own modifications.

Supplies....  

• vinyl table cloth (60x84)
• lots of old pants for quilt top
• 4 yards of flannel for quilt bottom
• 2 pkgs heavy duty snaps
• twill tape
• hammer.... I have to say that I tried using the setting kit that came with the snaps and I found my scrapbooking tools for eyelets to work much better.

1. I cut out 88 8" squares from old pants I had been saving.

2.  I sewed them together 8x11 squares. (this made my quilt 64"x88" -seam allowance)

3.  I bought 4 yards of flannel for the back and sewed that together. (that made it 72x90" so I had to cut a little off)

4.  I laid the flannel face down on the carpet and laid my quilt top face up on that.  

5.  I trimmed the flannel about 1.5 inches longer than the quilt top all the way around.

6.  I turned the flannel over twice and pinned it.

7.  I machine bound the edge of the quilt.

8.  I sewed a few random X's through the squares of the quilt to hold it together when washed.

9.  I bought a rectangle vinyl table cloth to  snap to the quilt.  I used twill tape everywhere I put the snaps to reinforce the table cloth.

10.  I bought heavy duty snaps and adhered them to the table cloth and quilt.

The best part about this is that I can use the table cloth as an actual table cloth and I can use the blanket without the waterproofing.  I just wipe the table cloth off and I can wash the blanket in the washing machine.

Another thought I had was to just buy a vinyl table cloth and a cloth table cloth and snap the two of them together.

-Anisa