These are the stories of my adventures as I attempt to define "homemaker."

Friday, February 28, 2014

[crafter] Nursery bedding - baby blanket

I'm a homemaker and I'm a crafter. Yep, that's me. And when preparing for a new baby last summer, I found that I could make most of the things for baby's nursery. Read my other post about making a crib skirt.

This time I was going to make a blanket to lay in the crib for baby. It sounded simple enough. Find a fabric I liked, cut it into a square, then hem it. Right? Yeah, not for this lady right here! I decided I wanted one side a patten and the other side minky. And while I'm at it, why not add a little ric rac in between?



I hopped on Pinterest and found motivation and tutorials. But THE BEST one is here at Sew4Home.com. I used the Mama Bear Ric Rac Blanket tutorial. It was so easy! Mine ended up about 34" square. And it's the perfect size. I will say that sewing Minky is dl;fh;fkjh;ewuohk;jdfh!!!!! It stretches so I'd sew sew sew and then get to the end and have all this fabric left over. Even when I pinned it. I'm not sure of the solution for this. Maybe someone with better sewing skills could shed some light on it. I ended up having to cut it a few times. If you look closely at my finished product, you might scoff.

But this is for a baby and Baby doesn't notice! At least she hasn't said anything about it...

I used 1 yard of Charcoal Minky from Fabrics.com.
https://www.fabric.com/buy/dg-549/minky-cuddle-dimple-dot-charcoal

And I bought 1 yard of gray damask from Hobby Lobby.

Check out that baby bump!

To quote from my other post: "As you can see from my informative photo, it was 8.99 a yard and then 30% off. This was the summer of 2013 so prices may be different now. What I did was go all over town and take pictures of the fabrics I liked. Then I used a handy photo editing app on my iPhone to add the prices. When I got home, voila! I had a little photo gallery of fabrics to ponder while resting my pregnant derrière."

I also ordered 5 yards of 1 1/2'' Jumbo ric rac fom Fabrics.com (I had some left over, too). 
https://www.fabric.com/buy/0272046/riley-blake-1-1-2-jumbo-ric-rac-gray

I washed everything before I used it. After cutting all the fabric, I pinned the ric rac to the right side of the damask fabric.

Then I waddled over to my sewing machine and stitched the ric rac in place.

Next I pinned the minky to the damask, right sides together, and left a gap on one side so that I could turn it inside out later (or outside in?!).

The next step sucked. This is when I sewed the pieces together and struggled to get the minky to stay. I kept having to bunch it up and then still ended up cutting it off. Oops. My fiished blanket has a weird shape to it because of this. But what's the trick to sewing minky to something? Anyone know!?!?

After finally finishing that crap, I mean step, I turned it inside out and used my iron to press the opened edge in place.

After the topstitch, I was done! 

If you liked this, please use Sew4Home's tutorial. Remember it was the Mama Bear Ric Rac Blanket (they have three blanket tutorials in that link). I printed it out and used it step by step, and other than my minky fiasco, it was so great. I absolutely love Baby's quilt! And I couldn't be prouder to say I made it. 8 months pregnant and all.


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