Sewing WIP

It seems the glorious new bag has given me a kick up the proverbial and I am now sewing like a demon.  I finished one project in under an hour and I'll share that later in the week. It is lovely to be stitching again, as I wasn't up to it through most of January.

I am currently working on a baby blanket.  I bet that surprised you didn't it?  Yes I have two more baby presents to work on and this has been in my head for ages.  What might be a surprise is that I am sewing this blanket.

This is going to be a very simple blanket, with one side being fabulous kid friendly cotton fabric and the other being a lovely, cosy and soft pink fleece.  I bought the fabric around a month ago but it  has been waiting for me to get my head in the right place.

I adore this fabric.  It has lots of great illustrations of animals with fun and vibrant colours to boot.  I think this is the sort of fabric that will be fun for a baby, toddler or child.  I decided to make the blanket approximately 1 metre square so that it can be used as a play mat as well as a blanket.   I even suggested to the OH last night that it could be used to make a baby fajita, if you know what I mean.  Kind of swaddle the baby all the way round.

 

What I did yesterday, was to lay the two fabric pieces back to back with the wrong sides together.  Then I basted it.  That was NOT fun for me and I really paid for it last night.  However, I'm glad that I did it, as it made the next step a bit easier.

Doesn't that fleece look so soft and inviting?  I can assure you that it is.  Last night after basting, I sat beneath the blanket and started to hand quilt it.

I had forgotten how much I love hand quilting.  I've not done much, but what I have done, I have enjoyed.  It is so calming to thread the needle through the layers.  This quilting was even more fun than the last time, because all I had to do was follow the line.  I started and stopped on each circle, rather than trying to connect them up through the layers.  I love the POP sound as you pull the knot through the fabric to anchor it!  Is that silly of me?  I don't care, it made me smile.

I decided to only quilt the purple circles on this fabric and chose a quilting thread that matched.  This is not going be very heavily quilting, I just wanted to add a little bit of texture to the blanket, and ensure that the two layers don't separate excessively in use.

I only have 6 more circles to quilt and then I have to work out what fabric I am going to use to bind this blanket.  Part of me feels it ought to be a contrast fabric, but I can't decide.

I am also slowly knitting on with my socks and my Central Park Hoodie, but as they haven't moved on dramatically I haven't taken photos this week.  I am about half way up my second sleeve on the hoodie, so I think when that is done I just need to block, sew it all together and add the hood!  How exciting!  But at the moment it looks dull.  It is still tremendous fun to knit, but photographically there is no WOW factor going whatsoever.

I still haven't decided on a stitch pattern for the very brown socks, but I will keep you posted!

I hope that you click on the button below, as there are lots of lovely crafters who want to share their work and inspiration.