January 9, 2012

Before I blogged: {My Version of the} He's All Boy Baby Blanket

He's All Boy Baby Blanket

A few months ago I made this quilt for some friends who's third boy was born a few weeks premature and was in the NICU.  I had seen the original on This Momma Makes Stuff, and I love it. Carrie had used flannel shirts, but it was June, and there were no flannels to be found at any of the the thrift stores I frequent.  So I improvised.  I picked up 3 men's cotton shirts from the thrift store and raided my stash for the other fabrics (the airplane fabric, navy and white seer-sucker and the light blue minky dot). Having never made a quilt before I was kind of apprehensive at first, but I figured I only had a few dollars invested in the quilt top, so if it turned out poorly, it was no big loss.  In the end, I LOVED the blankie.  Don't you love when that happens?  Giving handmade gifts that I'm proud of is one of the best feelings. 

Now, I admit, it's quite a loose interpretation of the original, but all the best parts are still there, thrifted fabrics layered with cushy minkie.  Where Carrie made the edging out of minkie, I made my own bias tape from scraps of the shirts and fabric I had left over using a tutorial I had in my files (I'm a little embarrassed to even admit that I have paper files still, am I the only one?) but it is the same idea as posted on About.com, the Continuous Binding method 2.  I love love loved how quickly the bias tape came together, and it was the perfect finish to this baby blanket.  Also, I only cut some of the pieces on the bias and sewed all pieces wrong sides together so fraying was not a concern. I also added a monogram that was cut using my Silhouette HD, and the silhouette interfacing to personalize it.

We just saw the little guy who received this blanket over Christmas and he sure is adorable, one of those babies who smiles with his entire body, you can't help but smile back.  I hope he is playing up a storm on his blanket right now... well, actually, our friends have three boys under 6, so for her sake, I hope he's cuddled up napping in it. 

thrifty quilt1            He's All Boy

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

what an adorable blanket!! great job!!

http://www.thehunsblog.com/

Polly @ Pieces by Polly said...

Love this blanket! I think the mens shirt fabric is the perfect touch.

You left a comment on my blog today about the quilt along. There wasn't a way to reply directly to it because your email address isn't linked I guess. Anyway, I answered it in a reply comment, but I wanted to make sure you got it.

It's hard to say because people do work as such different paces and I rarely get a large block of focused time to work (the kids or something else always seems to interrupt me.) The cutting is really going to be the hardest part, but we'll be doing that by cutting the fabric into strips, and then you can stack some of those strips as we cut them into the pieces themselves. Once all the pieces are cut, the piecing is really easy. We're just going to be sewing them into strips and then sewing strips together to make the whole quilt. Then of course the quilting can go really fast or take a while depending on how much quilting you do on it. As far as quilt patterns out there, though, I'd say this is definitely on the faster end. Hope that helps!