Monday, May 2, 2016

Double Sided Fleece Blankets

I should be working on Boogaloo's quilt... but a massive cold at the end of 2015 (plus being massively pregnant) meant that I needed a simpler project.  I found some awesome fleece for the dinosaur nursery and didn't want the new baby to have all of the benefits of my sewing. Lucky has been sleeping with a small tied fleece blanket created by a loving cousin, and I wanted him to have a backup blanket.  Keith and I loved the new Star Wars Movie so we picked out some fun BB8 fabric plus a simple plaid for the reverse side.


For Lucky's blanket I purchased 1.5 yards of each fabric.  The dinosaur and coordinating dot fabrics had a minimum 2 yard purchase so I will have to cut these down to make the blanket.  (Maybe I can get a boppy cover or something out of the extra!)  Let's start out with Lucky's blanket.


Lucky loved the fabric right away, it is silly that I even NEED to turn this into a blanket but I'm excited for a quick project on my trusty Janome.


I squared up the fabrics as best as I could on my rug with the wrong sides together.  I pinned around the edge and then sewed with a 0.5" seam (as best as I could.)  I don't care if the blanket is perfectly square, of if my lines are perfectly straight. I care about creating a blanket full of love for my little boys.


For the first hem, I was using my standard foot.  I wonder if I should have used my brand new walking foot instead, but I'm not experiencing a lot of fabric bunching.  I left a 4" opening near one corner so I could turn the blanket right side out.  I then closed this corner with a mattress stitch by hand.


I wanted to finish this with some edging.  I decided to add a 1" border with a straight stitch around the edge.  With the blanket folded right sides out, I pinned the edge one more time to keep the edges straight.


Boogaloo still has over a month to arrive and Lucky is downstairs playing for New Year's Eve.  I gave Lucky his blanket right away.  This is my last project of 2015!  I may work more on Lucky's sweater during an Iron Man marathon later, but this is the last project I will start and finish before the year changes.


I considered the blanket done after the finishing 1" hem around the edge.  I may need to add some quilting to keep the two layers together (Update from 2016 - Nope!  It is perfect as is!), but for now I'm too excited to let Lucky play with it!


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As I said in the Intro, I had 2 yards of each fabric pattern for Boogaloo's dinosaur blanket.  This is way bigger than I want for the blanket itself, and I decided that I'd love to make a boppy cover with the remaining fabric.  I was going to purchase a boppy cover pattern but since I purchased one off of etsy for Lucky I can actually use that cover with an overlapping pocket as a pattern to make one out of the fleece. (The shop no longer exists or I would have shared the link.)  Anyway, I know that I want to reduce the length of fabric by at least half a yard based on the boppy case that I already have, but this is also consistent with the sizing of Lucky's blanket.


Not only did I end up with an extra yard of the polka dot fabric, but I can easily take half a yard off of the dinosaur and polka dot to make my boppy cover.  I pinned four sides of the blanket and then cut along one of the straight dinosaur lines (outside of the pinned area) of the fabric by hand to trim it.


The blanket was so fast to stitch up that I have a feeling I'm not doing making these simple fleece blankets.  I finished Boogaloo's blanket on New Year's Day and it felt great to start the year with a fast, fun project for my new baby boy.  


Lucky's blanket - started and completed 12/31/15
Boogaloo's blanket - started and completed 1/1/16