My brother's wedding present!

I finally got to see my brother Chris this weekend (and meet his awesome fiancee, Jess), so I was able to give them their wedding present!  They are getting married this weekend, but I was too excited to wait even one more week to give them their gift!

For their wedding present, we (my parents & two of my brothers went in on it with me) gave them a picnic basket and a water-resistant picnic blanket that matched the picnic basket liner.  I bought the picnic basket and then made the liner & blanket.  I am so happy with how it turned out!  I just randomly had an idea one day and then got SO excited about it, so I just rolled with it... but then pretty much as soon as I started, I realized I had NO idea what I was doing.  I used a couple tutorials to help me, and then I just made up the rest as I went along.  I made a ton of mistakes that I either had to re-do or find a way to cover up.  For example, the dark blue edge around the blanket was not originally planned.  I added it to cover up my seams around the edge of the blanket, because they weren't straight and it was driving my crazy. But I love love LOVE the edge so much, so I am glad that I screwed up the seams and had to add the blue.  I think it really helped make the blanket look more finished.

 

I originally wanted it to be a waterPROOF picnic blanket, because it's SO annoying when you sit outside on damp ground and your butt gets wet, so I thought it would be awesome to have a picnic blanket that you could use on damp ground without worrying about water getting through!  But after talking to a couple women at the fabric stores and looking at my options, I realized that my only waterproof options couldn't be put in the dryer.  And I wanted the blanket to be able to be washed and dried, especially since it was 3 layers.  (I had the water-resistant bottom, a layer of fleece in the middle to make it more like a blanket, and then the cotton print on top).  So I found a fabric that can be washed and dried, and while it isn't waterproof, it is at least a little water-resistant, so hopefully it will still kinda do what I want it to!

I tied the layers together like you do with a quilt, but since it wasn't made with lots of little squares like a quilt is, I didn't want straight lines of ties every few inches.  I felt like it would look stupid with the pattern and just ruin the whole thing.  So I got embroidery thread in the navy blue, orangey/yellow, and purple colors of the centers of the flowers, and then I tied the blanket in the middle of all the flowers.  And the colors were so perfect--they matched so well that you can hardly see the ties!

I also used some extra fabric to make long strips, and then I sewed them to one corner of the blanket.  So it can be folded and then rolled up and tied.  It rolls up into a pretty small bundle, so that makes it easier to carry around!

And here is a picture of Naomi, because she wanted to be a model for one of the pictures!

It is far from perfect, and I'm sure other people could have found a better way to do it, but I don't care.  I love it! :)

My Christmas sewing projects are DONE!!

I have finally finished all of the sewing projects I planned for the girls' Christmas presents!  Actually there's one I haven't done yet, but it's a minor thing that I may just not do.  I'm kind of burned out now when it comes to sewing... I got my sewing machine and got so excited, and I decided to attempt these projects even though I haven't sewn in over 10 years, and even back then, it was on my mom's ancient machine with her help.  So I really had no idea what I was doing, which made every project take me 10 times longer than it should have.  Nothing turned out perfectly (not even close!) which frustrates me, because I am a perfectionist.  I made SO many mistakes.  But I'm still pretty happy with how everything turned out! 

My first project was Naomi's owl.  Naomi has got a thing for owls.  I was just playing around on Pinterest one day, and Naomi came into the office and saw the picture for the stuffed owl tutorial, and she immediately wanted one.  After that day, she continued to ask me every few days about her stuffed owl.  I finished it a while ago, and it has been really hard for me to not give in and just give it to her early.  I'm so excited!!

The tutorial I used for the owl stuffie is found on a blog called Hammer & Thread.

My next project was a stuffed animal for Aleta.  I didn't want to make the same animal, (and I ended up having a ROUGH time making that silly little owl, so there was no way I was making two!) so I picked an elephant for her.  The elephant tutorial was from a website called Birch Fabrics.

My last sewing project was a little tote/book bag for each of the girls for their library books.  Naomi recently got her own library card, and we love the library, so I thought it'd be fun for each of them to have their own library bag.  I found a pretty simple tutorial on 30 Minute Crafts (although I think it took me closer to 5 hours to make mine... definitely NOT 30 minutes for me!).  I did add one little thing to each of their bags--I wanted their initial on it, so I sewed a 4-inch felt letter on each of their bags.

You can't really tell from the pictures, but the fabric is NOT a solid color.  It's a pretty teal color with a cute, small, white pattern on it.  I think the bags look so much better in person since you can see the pattern on the fabric.  Here's a close-up so you can see it better:

See?  Pretty!

I found all of the tutorials by searching around on Pinterest--it's a gold mine for free tutorials and patterns!  Also, I spent a total of 18 dollars on ALL of the supplies for these projects.  I have only shopped for fabric/sewing supplies on big sale weekends (usually a holiday weekend), and I use coupons on top of the sales so I get pretty good deals.  I saved 19 bucks on all of these supplies when I only spent 18.  And with those supplies, I have made these 4 things, a hot air balloon pillow for my niece, and I still have almost the entire bag of stuffing and probably half of the fabric left!