In an unusual turn of events, a recent home remodeling project led to a crafty weekend of sorts.  How, you may be asking?  Well, I’ll tell you.  And to keep it from getting boring, I’ve got pictures!

The last weekend of February, Seymour and I loaded up the zoo and took a road trip to visit his parents in the bustling metropolis of Ankeny.  On a quest to find some stencils to use in our bedroom, we headed to Jo Ann Fabrics.  That was a very bad idea.  We left much poorer than we went in, our arms full of fabric.  But oh, was it ever cool fabric!

We left with two types of fabric and two types of projects in mind.  Project number one: Tie blankets.  I’ve made one before, and it was fairly simple.  I felt confident that I could help Seymour’s mom figure it out, especially since Thumper has one in his crib and we were going to make the blankets together (no more doing things long-distance like the time we tried to make a fitted sheet for his cradle mattress).  Project number two: Pillow cases!  Because what good would a new blanket be without a new pillow case to go with it?

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We did the pillow cases first, since they required sewing (and sobriety).  They were all easy peasy lemon squeezy – we used this tutorial from the always-awesome YouTube – except for Thumper’s.  Somehow, the piping on his came unfolded while I was sewing, so we had to rip out the seam and redo it.  (If you take the time to watch the video I linked to, you’ll understand exactly why that was rather a pain in the butt.  The seam ripping, that is, not the resewing.  Not that seam ripping is ever fun, but anyway. . .)

Next up were the tie blankets.  The ones we made for Cricket and Thumper were kits, and we knocked them out pretty quickly.  They had cut lines printed on the fabric, which made them super simple and had us wishing that the other two were kits, especially since they were so big.  But once we drafted the guys into helping, the tying (and then the cutting and tying for the big blankets) went pretty quickly.  And we had four happy kids.

Now, to recover. . . 😀

(c) 2013.

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