The Spoonflower Adventure Continues

Note finished hem of blanket -- 1) straight stitching 2) double zigzagging 3) zigzagging.

Spoonflower's newest fabric, Minky, is fabulous.  It is forgiving, it is soft, and it is a joy with which to work.  Having said that, above is a picture of my first effort at a blanket.  I ordered one yard of Minky fabric in "A Tumble of Sheep," one of my designs in my Spoonflower shop.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the tactile sensations of this fabric impressed me the minute I pulled it out of the Spoonflower shipping envelope.  I washed and dried the fabric and the colors held.

I like easy-peasy projects and I decided to make a baby blanket.  Now, mind you, I rarely look for directions on anything and just plunge directly into whatever I'm doing.   I should learn to Google first, sew later, but I didn't.  I folded the right sides of the Minky together, pinned them, and stitched the folded over yard -- now 27" wide instead of the original 54" wide -- of fabric together, leaving a small hole so I could pull the fabric right side out.  I stitched up the hole then straight stitched a 5/8" seam along the outer four sides of the blanket.   Then I folded over and pinned a strip of 2" wide pink satin blanket binding to both sides of 1 side of  the Minky, mitering the corners once I had determined the length of that one side.  (If you look at the above picture, there is no longer pink satin binding on this blanket.)  I zigzag stitched the binding to the blanket, messing up everything.  I stopped and looked at my effort.  I showed it to my husband.  Now my husband thinks just about everything I do is great -- possibly because he has to live with me -- but he is not an honest critic. My last honest critic went off to college 15 years ago -- my daughter --  and she is now a mother of three of my grandchildren. 

I looked at my work objectively, saw that it did not look good, reminded myself that I had purchased a yard, and boldly sheared off everything -- the binding and the fabric -- leaving -- when folded -- a 25" wide blanket.  I stitched everything back up and then Googled binding a Minky blanket and there were several generous people who has posted advice and tips.  And next time I will follow those tips.  :-)  I wanted to get this sucker done because I'm giving it to my oldest granddaughter tomorrow as part of her birthday gifts -- she loves soft fabric and she can use it with her baby dolls.

So my next step -- because I had now decided NOT to use the pink satin binding --  was I laid out the stitched together fabric on the dining room table and grabbed a dinner plate and a sharpie and I put the dinner plate in each of the four corners and marked off rounded edges with the sharpie.  Then I carefully tucked in the rough edges and stitched the rounded corners together.  Then I zigzagged around the whole border of the blanket, then double zigzagged again all around the blanket leaving a nice finished look to the blanket . . . except all the sides are not precisely even but they are close enough.  Next time I WILL do better.  But for a first try on an unfamiliar fabric, the result, for me, was acceptable.  :-)