Today my baby sister is having her baby! I wanted to make her a baby blanket…so I grabbed my bag of my grandpa’s old shirts and found some old satin pillow cases and linen napkins of my grandmas and got to work.
I used this owl pattern that was for a pillow, but I just used the front side of it and appliqued it onto the blanket. Since the edge was curvy I cut out an owl shape out of muslin and sewed right sides together all the way around. Then I cut a horizontal 3-4″ slit in the middle of the muslin and flipped the whole thing right side out. That way there are clean edges all the way around and I didn’t have to struggle to get the edge to turn under.
I cut open the two satin pillow cases that were grandma and pieced them together to make the back of the blanket. I decided to do a 1″ruffle around the edge out of some scrap fabric I had kicking around that I almost threw out.
The background plaid and eyes was from my grandpas flannel shirt. The bib part was made from one of grandmas old linen napkins that had a crocheted edge. The gray dot was from some pillows nik (baby sister) and I just made for her girls’ room.
I sewed the owl onto a piece of tan linen that I bought at a yard sale on our sisters trip in Manhattan Beach, CA.
The lace dickey was from my other sisters collection that she had gotten at an estate sale years ago. I finally had a good use for it!
My grandmas pillow cases had some light blue embroidery on the edges…so I kept it. I have been keeping this blanket a secret for weeks! Now Nikki’s in the hospital today having her baby….so now I can show it off. I love that it’s going to be so sentimental for the new baby (Jane?). They are still deciding on the name. Our grandparents passed away about 6 years ago.
Side Note #1–
Last weekend we took the boys up to the cabin for the weekend…we had two beautiful days of 65-70 degree weather. We didn’t even have to start the fire when we got there. All 4 feet of snow had melted from the deck, since the last time we were there. There’s still of TON of snow there.
Here are the boys digging a tunnel.
Heber borrowed his buddies snow mobile and took the boys for rides. It was nice that we could drive to the top of the driveway! Usually we take the four wheeler up and have to park it at the bottom of the driveway and pull the sled full of our stuff up the hill.
– Side note #2– Sausha at Show and Tell showed off her new slipcovers that I made for her in December.
How wonderful that you have made the blanket from your Grandparents things. This is a lovely thing to do. When my neice died last year, my sister (her mother) and myself used her clothing to make things that would serve to remind us of her it was worthwhile healing process for us. My rag bracelet tutorial on my blog is dedicated to her. Your baby blanket is lovely.
Interesting too that you used the muslin backing for a neat edge I mentioned this method reciently in a post about my black and white applique quilt that im working on, I was looking far a name for the process but I didnt get any responses on the subject I think it’s so much easier to stitch pieces which are prepared in this way dont you think?
Yvonne