Sewing

One of my recent, random and very whimish hobbies is sewing. It started out when my son became obsessed with costumes and was always coming up with new ideas for dressing up. Which is great, but not convenient or cheap unless it's the day after Halloween. And the problem with him is that a towel tied around his neck to be a cape just doesn't cut it. (Thankfully that does work for his sister) Once we started sewing costumes on occassion for him I began to get hooked. I've become addicted to making all sorts of random stuff. A lot of it has been mending things or making baby gifts (mostly because I'm too cheap to buy things already made) but also because it really is so much fun to see a piece of fabric transform into a useful blanket, burb cloth, or curtain.

I've tried various projects, but I have found the easiest and cutest baby gift to make is a simple fleece blanket with ribbon taggies around the edge. Now of course you could go out and buy one of these at just about any store and it would be way easier, but they are so darn expensive and when you make it yourself you can choose any colors and ribbons you like. Someone made them for my girls and they both adore them (the pictures are of my daughter's blankets, you can see they are well loved). Of course I have given away all the ones that I've made and of course I have no pictures of mine, but oh well, you get the idea anyway...





I have a few gifts I'd like to finish up before we move (because I know it will be weeks before I'm organized enough to unpack the sewing machine) and I didn't want to do a blanket because...um...well....I'd have to clean the kitchen counters first to be able to spread all that material out. (how pathetic is that??)

A friend had just been asking about what to do to use up scrap material and I went out on a blog search for an answer. I came across a ton of awesome sewing blogs that inspired me with so many fabulous projects and ideas that are spinning around in my head right now. But the one I decided to tackle for a cute little baby gift experiment was a scrappy monster. So first look at her's and see how darn cute an idea it is and then go ahead and look at mine and then laugh, really it's ok.



For my first attempt I don't think it's too bad, but I defenitely made a few mistakes.

1. Too much brown fabric makes it look more like a potato moster.

2. It needs to be sized for a baby (duh) My 4 year old loves it and snatched him right up, saying "Thanks for the giant monster bean bag." My ten month old will probably get knocked out by it when it goes flying across the room later today.



Off to make more scrappy monsters, I mean clean the kitchen, hmmm, maybe I should actually start packing?