Twas The Night Before Easter

On February 21, 2015 our first grandchild Cecilia Grace was born and has become the most important person in our life.  So of course I had to make her a little softie bunny for Easter.  Having an embroidery machine allows me to personalize everything and anything for her. I made her a few personalized burp cloths. Then I realized that they really needed functional burp cloths so I brought out the serger and made her a stack of tri-layer flannel ones that I just serged around.

Here she is at one month.  Her expressions are priceless!

My Latest Baby Shower Gifts

I made this Elephant baby quilt for a baby shower this past weekend.  The colors of the room are yellow and gray so I used that color combination. I used 2 different machine applique elephants and when I did the quilting I echo quilted around the elephants. On the border, my favorite part, I meandered. The gender of the baby was not known so I tried to stay with yellow, purple and green.  I used the Bright Hope baby quilt pattern from Smith Designs. 

 A few weeks ago I attended a class given by a Pfaff educator and she demonstrated how to use the Sensormatic Echo Free motion foot; I bought it that day knowing that I was going to use it for the elephants. It was really easy to use to quilt around an object.  I actually have the same foot for my Elna and did not know the technique for using it properly.

 

 

I also made some burp cloths in the same manner as my tutorial Burp Cloths shown earlier on my blog. These are made with diapers and flannel.

 

 

 

 





Making Burp Cloths

 

I have been making personalized burp cloths, see my  Previous Post, for awhile and I really like the ones I do with diapers and I think they are more absorbent.  But every time I need to make another one I have to dig out my scribbled notes.  So I have decided to write a tutorial and not have to go through the search and discovery method each time.


Supplies:

Diaper - wash and dry.  The diaper should measure 17 inches in length so sometimes I have to cut.   It will not be 15 inches wide; that is ok because you want it to be smaller in width.
Flannel - 17 inch X 15 inch (I wash in hot water and dry on hot prior to construction)


So the first thing I do is embroider on the front of the diaper in the top 1/3 in center. I use medium weight tear-a-way stabilizer.

 

Next I lay the flannel right side up and lay the  diaper right side down on top of it.  I line up the left sides and sew a 1/4 inch seam. Remember the length of the flannel and diaper should be the same but not the width.

 

 

Next I line up the right sides and sew a 1/4 inch seam.  I want to have the flannel showing on both sides of the front so the width of the flannel is larger than the width of the diaper.

 

For the top seam I line up the raw edges with the flannel extending an inch or so on both sides. I just make it extend equally on both sides. and sew the top seam.

 

Sew the bottom seam last leaving an opening to turn right side out.  Before turning clip the four corners. Once turned sew a zigzag or decorative stitch around the perimeter.

 

 

 

 

 

Sewing the last few weeks....

Well I have been busy sewing gifts for Christmas so I have not posted for awhile.  Obviously those gifts cannot be posted until after Christmas lest someone figure out what is for whom.  But I have made a few baby gifts that turned out so well.  Once again I made my favorite item, the baby bunting as posted previously the baby bunting.  Since it was for a winter baby, the inside is flannel but the outside a warmer cuddly fabric.

I made a baby quilt, Sunday Best, that has appliqued dresses, and it is a pattern that I have fallen in love with.  Who could resist this quilt?  The fabric had the characters of Beatrix Potter on it so I also made the Flopsy Bunny cloth book to go with it.

 

 

And I added a few more of my favorite items, the binky bib and some personalized burp cloths.