Baby Sister Blanket

My six year old has had it in his head that he NEEDS to sew a baby blanket for his baby sister before she arrives. I think it's cute that he's so excited about it. We finished the blanket just a few days ago. It only took us two afternoons.



Alexander picked out the fabric with a very specific blanket design in mind. A few days later my sister gave us a blanket out of the same flowered fabric for Christmas! It would have been very similar to the one Alexander would make, so I talked him into making quilt squares instead of just two large pieces sewn together as he had originally planned (although, I do wish the squares were larger). Now the blankets match, but are not the same. I was also able to talk him into using soft minky dots fabric for the backing instead of pilly fleece.



You may have noticed that the satin blanket binding is two different colors. (That comes from my grandma's stash.) Alexander really wanted the binding to be pink, but we didn't have enough pink to go around. So even though we had enough yellow binding, he decided to do half and half, exactly as shown with the two pink sides touching and the two yellow sides touching.



I love the little message he chose to put on the back of the blanket. So sweet!

I did most of the "steering" while Alexander pressed the pedal for me. It's really fun to have a little helper! It does make things go slower, but it's worth it. I'm trying to let him have more freedom, but I can't resist jumping in and offering my ideas (such as avoiding cheap-o fleece).

Cowboy Quilt in the Works

Let me introduce you to an unfinished project that's been hanging around my house for almost a year. It's a cowboy quilt that my oldest son and I have been making. It has large squares embroidered with my his cowboy drawings (that he did last year) that will be sprinkled amongst the smaller squares. I do love all the various cowboy fabric.



Here's Monkey One laying out the triangle pieces that will eventually go around the edge of the diamonds.



The embroidered muslin squares are my favorite part of the quilt. I love the drawings my little artist made. (I still need to clean and iron these, in case you were wondering)



I did most of the embroidery, but as you can see I had some help! The areas he did are so sweet and special to me. I'm glad his stitches are not as uniform as mine because they will always be recognizable as his.



Here are the embroidery portraits of my little cowboys. There will be another one of my husband and me, but it's still in the embroidery hoop right now.



I originally intended the quilt to be queen size, but I'm considering splitting it into two smaller quilts. That way there will be one for each of my boys and I won't have to try to quilt such a large area. How on earth do people quilt a queen size blanket, anyway?

Xmas Gifts 2: Football Fan Blankets

My brother-in-law is a huge BYU football fan. So for Christmas I went in search of his team's fleece to make him and his 18-month-old son matching blankets. While I didn't find the right team fleece I did find this fabulous minky football fabric that is even better. I lined the back side with fleece for thickness and made my own logo on the front out of the same.


This blanket was for my nephew. It's about four feet, square.


Here's the blanket for my brother-in-law. It's about 6 feet long, maybe longer.


I only had to cut the "Y" out once. I used the reverse for the baby's blanket.


He looks pretty happy about the gift, don't you think?

Zoo Baby Blanket

Completed December 2008
I know almost nothing about making quilts. But I love quilting stores and find some of the cutest fabrics there that I attempt to make into something worthy. I'd had this super cute zoo print fabric for a year or two. I believe it's Alexander Henry fabric. I finally found the perfect use for it: a baby blanket for Monkey #2. I started the project before he was born (in fact, I went into labor a few hours after I was working on it one night), but didn't finish it until 8 months later, just in time for baby's first Christmas.


(Monkey #1 is holding it up for me. See his fluffy hair?) This quilt very closely resembles my dear friend Brinna's baby blanket that her grandmother made her. I'm not sure if I did that on purpose or not. The prairie point edge (as I'm told it's called) certainly was taken from her blanket. I really like the way it turned out.


Here it is, all folded up, looking cozy, and ready to be wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree. You can kind of see the quilting. I just outlined a few of the characters/scenes sporadically. The large giraffe print is minky. It's so soft, and lines the back of the blanket (found at the Fabric Center --They have the best minky prints). I love rick rack! (This rick rack was purchased from my local fabulous quilting store, Material Girls, which, by the way, has a giveaway on April 15 at Give Away Today)


Here's a closeup of the personalization I did on my sewing machine letter embroidery. I believe the green and brown polka dot fabric is by Moda. The yellow was from a fat quarter, but I don't remember any more details about it.


Here's the little monkey himself, at 10 months old, wrapped in his blanket. It's a good size: small enough to take with us on trips, and big enough to cover him in the crib and while nursing. I suppose I could measure it since that size description was vague. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. Right now the baby is upstairs in his crib with the blanket, probably in a very similar position to this.