Adventures in Sewing – Personalized baby blocks with ribbon

Getting a sewing machine at the same time my sister was pregnant was great timing. I immediately set out on a quest to find projects to do. One of the projects I found on Pinterest was this set of cute blocks for babies.

I followed the directions and found the project fairly easy except for the one time I sewed two of the wrong sides together and the time I forgot to put the sides pretty side to pretty side and one ended up upside down.

The other issue I had was that the blocks didn’t actually come out to be perfect squares. This could be because I have issues cutting straight and also because I probably sewed in a crooked line. I also had to manually close a few corners, because I wasn’t sure where to stop sewing with the machine.

I used old t-shirt scraps for the letters which I sized and printed a template for using Microsoft Word. I tried to freehand it first and it was a disaster! I also realized that I should sew the letters onto the fabric BEFORE I sewed the block together. Unfortunately, I only realized this after I put the first block together. DOH!

Luckily I  remembered that I had extra stuffing from the pillow I dismantled for the cat bed suitcase, so I was able to use that instead of expensive fill.

Overall, I think the blocks came out okay and will serve their purpose considering they are just going to be chewed on by an infant. They are cuter when they are imperfect, right? RIGHT????

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Adventures in Sewing – Make your own playmat

Recently, I have taken up sewing. I bought myself a snazzy new Brother XL2600i sewing machine for a whopping $80 (okay, I talked my sister into buying it for me as an early Christmas present, but I digress). I bought a ton of fabric remnants from Joann’s (mega sale AND 50% off!) and I found some old spools of thread I had laying around from God knows where.

Terrible shot since Mimi never stays still, but you get the gist

The next project was deciding on what to make. I tried to make a dog outfit – it came out okay but it definitely needed work. I also started making little items that I hope to give away as Christmas gifts. I did these things to practice my foot pedal control, keeping a stitch straight, not having the bobbin thread bunch up, etc.  For a while I was a complete failure. So what did I decide to do? Do a big project! Yes, yes, I don’t make sense sometimes, but alas, that is me!

I Googled ideas for easy baby items as my sister is about to give birth any day now and came across this tutorial on how to make a playmat.

I thought how hard could it be? Thankfully it was not difficult at all.  Of course, I didn’t follow the directions as well as I should have and I kind of ghetto rigged it which means it is not perfect at all, but it’s cute and decent and I won’t be embarrassed when people see it and know I made it.

Had I measured better and actually cut the fabric and batting correctly on the first try (or second try), everything would have been much easier. Instead, some of the batting doesn’t actually go all the way to the edges of the blanket and one corner is kind of wonky. But hey! it’s for a kid to lay on, and puke on, and poop on…………I think it’s good enough! And good enough is always good enough 🙂

It will be washed and ironed or at least steamed before being presented as a gift. 🙂