Sewing: Heirloom Cut Chenille Baby Blanket
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| Heirloom Cut Chenille Baby Blanket |
Allow me to preface this by saying that I am NOT a seamstress. I have owned my sewing machine for one month, and this was the 3rd thing I've made. If I can do this by following directions on a blog, so can you!
I just dropped this blanket off with the new mom & dad a few hours ago. They were so sweet and told me not to worry about the crooked lines :) They said they were honoured to have one of my first projects!
This adorable idea came to me from Aesthestic Nest, which I found via this pin on Pinterest. Anneliese has put together an amazing blog with so many creative ideas. I've only just started to browse through her "Sewing" tags... and found another spin on this project, but a Chevron version. I cannot resist! I'm hosting a baby shower in a month and I need to acquire that Chevron fabric and get to work!
I made this blanket kind of as a test run for my goal of the Chevron Chenille blanket, and I am thrilled with the results.
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| Heirloom Cut Chenille - aka 3 Layers of Flannel |
This particular blanket is only 24"x24" (give or take - it wasn't exactly square in spite of my best efforts...)
The grey material with the white flowered pattern: I bought this over a year ago at IKEA, with the idea of stretching it across these frame-type things and making a cute headboard/wall display. I made one, and I did a horrible job. So the fabric (and the horrible stretchy mess of a frame) were just sitting in a closet doing nothing. The original blog recommends a "home dec" weight material. This didn't mean much to me, but I guessed that my fabric is similar and just went with it. I was worried because for a little baby it isn't the softest material going. But baby will spend her time mostly on the chenille side I suppose. Also once it is all quilted it feels quite nice.
The white flannel: I actually bought a package of 12 pre-fold cloth diapers at Walmart on clearance for $5, and used those!
It was meant to be; one piece of the grey and white IKEA fabric which I had already cut, was just slightly bigger than the prefold diapers. I had toyed with the idea of using a piece of yellow & pink flannel, but then I'd have to cut it. Seeing as I had 12 of these cloth diapers that were a perfect size, I just went for it! I like the plain white too, but the original pin is gorgeous with 3 different colours of flannel that coordinate with the "home dec" top fabric.
For the Step-by-Step, visit the above links. I'll just highlight here what I did differently.
-Size: Mine is more of a "tummy-time" size, being only about half the size of the original pin.
-3 flannel pieces in the same colour
-Binding: I also bought the Satin Blanket Binding. I, however, didn't bother doing the double-fold because I ran out of patience. I can see how it would make the blanket look a bit bigger had I taken the time to do the binding the way originally described... but oh well. It worked okay. I literally just took the crease from the single-fold satin blanket binding (in white, to match the flannel & the flowers) and pinned it all the way around the blanket. As a newbie, I found it excessively frusterating to go around the rounded corners, but I got the hang of it by corner #4 and ended up re-doing the first 3 :). I then top-stitched around the binding, removed the pins, and did this super cute little "Star" stitch that came on my lovely sewing machine. To add a touch of girly colour I did the star border in a light pink.
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| Cutting - still a long way to go! |
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| After I cut through the 3 flannel layers, before washing. Almost done! |
You can also see the little pink stars that my machine will stitch. That step took a long time, but wasn't ard in itself.
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| Before Washing: Not the best straight lines I've ever seen... |
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| Before Washing |
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