Cut Chenille Baby Blanket

As I’ve mentioned before, I like to make baby blankets as gifts for friends and family with new babies. The quilted kind is fun, since I get to pick a bunch of cute coordinating fabrics, but I also love cut chenille blankets– they may be a bit more trouble to make (okay, a lot more trouble), but the results are just amazing.

Making cut chenille is easy, but time-consuming. You’ll need:

• Main fabric (the cute one that’s going to show)
• 4 layers of flannel in coordinating colors*
• Thread in a color that’s unnoticeable when stitched on top of your main fabric.
• Thread in a color that’s unnoticeable when stitched on top of your backing fabric.
• 1/2 yard fabric to make binding

*I’ve previously used three layers only, but then you sometimes end up seeing the back side of your main cotton fabric between the rows of chenille. I’d prefer not to, so I’m using four layers this time and only cutting through three of them.

Patchwork Baby Quilt

One of the traditions I’ve tried to keep up is that friends or family members who have babies get a handmade blanket from me. There are so many adorable quilting fabrics out there that it’s fun just picking out what I’m going to use! And every now and then I come across a line of fabrics that has so many cute options I can’t pick just one– so I pick all of them.

This quilt was made from the fabric line “Fine n’ Dandy” by Riley Blake, and I bought a coordinating set of all the fabric designs to use in my blanket. The set I purchased was a 10″ layer cake, which means that it’s 18 squares of fabric, one of each design. They also sell “charm packs,” which are sets of 5″ squares, but the pricing is such that it’s cheaper to buy a set of the 10″ squares and cut them in quarters with a rotary cutter. So that’s what I did. (and when I say “I,” I mean “I and my two friends, who I recruited to assist in my crafting efforts for our mutual friend, the mother-to-be”)

Ninja Crib Mobile

I started off titling this post just “Ninja Mobile,” but that kept making me picture a ninjamobile– a car filled with ninjas who would drive around and pick fights with bystanders– so I felt the need to clarify.

This crib mobile is a gift for a friend’s baby shower, and is actually the second mobile I’ve made– the first featured corgis and sheep, and I was inspired to make it after paying far too much for an Etsy seller to make a mobile for my own daughter’s nursery. Making your own mobile is easy, though of course you can always complicate matters (at least I can) by planning fancy details.

Basically, the mobile is made of a wooden embroidery hoop, from which you hang various felt ornaments– in this case, ninjas. Then you cover the hoop in felt and hang it from the ceiling. Simple, right?

Flashback: 31 Days of Halloween

Since it’s the beginning of October I figured I’d do a flashback post about my most memorable October… When my daughter was 10 months old, I decided that for her first Halloween we would have to do something special. And for some insane reason, I decided that the “something special” would be creating a different costume for each of the 31 days in October, ending with her “real” costume, a penguin suit that would be part of a family costume.

The first few costumes were easy– put her in a pot with some white yarn, and she was a pot of spaghetti; put a tutu on her, she was a ballerina– but as the days went on I had to get more creative. Perhaps in some cases too creative. Read on for the grand list:

Flashback: Pink Elephant Birthday Party

For my daughter’s first birthday I went all out with the pink elephant theme. It started with the invitations, which I got customized on Etsy, and then added hand-punched elephants in pink shimmery paper (mounted on 3D adhesive squares), plus tiny pink rhinestones for a little sparkle. The invitations were handed out in pink shimmery envelopes, and I actually had to go out and buy a special pen to prevent smearing of the purple ink I used to address them. And that was just the beginning…

Allie’s cake was four layers high, in pink ombre, and was topped with a homemade bunting made out of pink fabric scraps (that match the bunting decorating her bedroom).

There were also pink polka dot elephant cookies, pink macarons, pink candy popcorn, meringues, candy kisses, and pink Pocky. Everything was presented either in clear glass apothecary jars (from TJ Maxx, so much cheaper than anywhere else), or on homemade glass cake stands, made by gluing glass candleholders to glass plates with my trusty E6000 adhesive. Oh, and at the last minute I picked up a papier mache elephant and painted it pink to put on the table.

   

And of course, we had to do a cake smash photo shoot (which was several weeks after the party, but hey, still fun!). The background is just a big piece of pink fabric, binder-clipped to our bookshelves, and I got the wooden letters on Etsy and painted them white to use as props. Yes, I’m aware (now) that the E was upside-down…

She’s wearing a custom pink and gray tutu, and her shirt has a pink elephant on it with “I’m One!” embroidered underneath. Etsy is awesome. And yes, the smash cake is pink on the inside too.  😉

The scary thing is, this party is arguably NOT the most elaborate one I’ve thrown for her birthday…