Lots of Life happening this week: Baby Shower II Preparation, Income Tax preparation, celebrating Valentines Day, attending the monthly Senior Luncheon, Volunteer Ministry Commitment and traveling in addition to watching the Westminster Dog Show on TV for two nights which means very little time to work on one of the many quilt projects on my list.
The second baby shower for my youngest son and his wife is this weekend and will be a little bit more relaxing for me since I don't have any hosting responsibilities. Nevertheless, I didn't want to come empty-handed, so I thought I would make a bundle of burp cloths which would allow me to use up some up more stash. I thought making twelve of them (two of the same print) would be a nice number to make and of course they have to be gender neutral. I decided that I would make six with a flannel backing and six with white toweling fabric which I had in my stash and had bought when I was thinking about making reuseable paper towels.
I found a free pattern on Pinterest and printed it and I swear I checked to make sure it was set to print at 100% Fortunately for me, I did a test run of the pattern and could tell that it was way too small. Also, I didn't like that I had to basically cut the pieces by hand because of the curves, so I came up with an alternative pattern which can be entirely cut with a rotary cutter.
I cut two pieces, 9" x 20", one for the front and one for the back. Folding the two pieces together, RST, along the long edge, I rounded the corners using Sharon Hultgren's Easy Circle Cut Ruler and then unfolded, found the center and then cut the neck notch using the 7" circle mark (it's not a complete 7" half circle, I lined it up at the top of the blue masking tape which is approx. 2" under the 7" mark to create a more rounded oval cut). I sewed with a 1/4" seam all around, leaving a 2-3" opening on the straight side, clipped around all the curve areas, turned right side out, press and then top-stitched all the way around to close the opening. This was a quick and easy pattern. fat quarter friendly and I'm sure I would have enjoyed making them more if I hadn't decided to make twelve at one time.
When both of my boys were babies, I used cloth diapers for burp cloths and I can say these burp cloths are way cuter. I'll be sure to mention to my son at the Shower that his baby will have better burp cloths than he did. That's what happens when your mama didn't sew back then.
I know I'm going to have to make more of these once the baby is born and the gender finally revealed and I'm thinking of doing them without the neck notch to make them even faster. Also, I love how the toweling fabric feels which is similar to the old-time rotating cloth towel dispensers that were around when I was young, so I'm thinking of making hand towels with it using some more stash. I'll first make a few to test to see how well they launder and also to train the men in the house that these are not disposable.
Looking forward to resuming my quilt projects and hopefully I will have something finish for next week. And still another week of no fabric purchases.
Minus 100 Yards Challenge YTD Total : - 34.375 yards
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